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By Clarence B. Harrold 



Kentucky Kernels 



Kentucky Kernels 



A Few Stories From 
the Land of Blue 
Grass and Pennyroyal 



BY 

CLARENCE B. HARROLD 




SPENCER, INDIANA 
1914 



■ W 



'Co $&t& iDepp 

'^Ijts tittle volume Is dedicated; 
because l)e is man after our 
own liking; a IKentuckian of tl)e 
bluest blood; one wl)ose l>eart is 
always open to l)ls brother fellow- 
man; wbose friendship is unselfish 
and unstinted; a man wljo l)as tl)e 
courage to back l)is convictions. 



DFC 16 1914 



? 0,*T* 



<G>CU388838 

Copyright, 1914, by Clarence B. Harrold 

k-0/ 



FOREWORD 



HE STORIES and tales told about things 
that have occurred down in "Old Ken- 
tucky" make an unusually large volume. 
Again, there is many a story and many 
a tale that have not as yet found their 
way into print, and, if compiled, would 
make an enormous book. 

The older people here take a great de- 
light in recounting the things that have transpired 
that go to make up local history, and one never tires 
of listening to the interesting stories. They like to 
tell them, too, and the pleasure in listening to them 
is just as great to the listener as it is to the one 
telling them. 

I spent several months in the southern part of 
Kentucky in the vicinity of the world's greatest 
wonder, the Mammoth Cave, which is not many 
miles from the northern line of Tennessee. This is 
not in the blue grass region so frequently spoken of, 
but the "pennyrile" district, as they term it. 

It has long been said that when you are speak- 
ing of the finest "hosses," the best whiskey, and the 
handsomest women, that you were thinking about 



the State of Kentucky. However, the time of the 
good "hoss" has been supplanted by the good mule ; 
the liquor is good, but not of the "mountain dew" 
quality which was so prevalent in years gone by, 
when every man there was practically his own dis- 
tiller, for now Kentuck is a prohibition state, in a 
way ; and the women — God bless them — are as beau- 
tiful as the sun ever shone upon. 

A little story here will not be amiss, of a Ken- 
tucky colonel who had gone to Louisville on a busi- 
ness trip. He found himself in the dining room of 
Hotel Henry Watterson the next morning after his 
arrival the night before. The head waiter beckoned 
him to a seat at a small table in the center of the 
room. After being seated, the colored waiter came 
over and was awaiting the gentleman's order for 
breakfast. He gave it, ordering the usual Kentucky 
breakfast of corn cakes, syrup, crisp bacon and black 
coffee, and just before leaving the waiter said: 

"Will you all have watah, sah?" 

"Watah, sah!" exclaimed the Colonel; "watah! 
By gad, sah, what do you mean? Do you all think, 
sah, I want to take a bath? By gad, sah, no! Do 
you unde'stand me, sah?" 





The sun shines bright in my old Kentucky home, 

Tis summer, the darkies are gay; 
The corn top s ripe and the meadows are in bloom 

And the birds make music all the day. 



KENTUCKY KERNELS 



County Court Day in Kentucky 



T""1HE ONE! "go-to-town" day for the farmers 
mm in Kentucky is county court day. Not that 
IB he has any real business before the county 
judge, but it is THE day when they gather in from 
the four corners of the county and bring with them 
their best mules, their best cattle and other products 
and offer them at public barter. 

In Glasgow, county court day is on the third 
Monday of each month, and the people come there 
in large numbers for many miles in every direction. 
My first time to witness this important event was 
a revelation to me in things along this line. I never 
saw so many saddle horses tied to the hitch-racks 
about the town in my life time, and it seemed that 
every other horse was a mule. The great crowd of 



people made me think of circus day in a country 
town. 

Here comes a three-horse team up the street, 
with the driver seated on the off wheel horse. His 
wagon is loaded with tobacco and the chances are 
that he came from the knob country thirty miles 
away. When he disposes of his tobacco, he will, no 
doubt, take back a load of goods for the little store 
at Fallen Timber or Hulett's Cross Roads. 

We look up another street and see a young 
man on horseback, leading a spanking team of 
mules. He needs some money, so his mules must 
go at the best price. And right here I want to say 
that Kentucky mules do bring good prices, for they 
are the best mules in the world. Official statistics 
show that there were 205,000 mules raised within 
the confines of this state in 1913. Kentucky ranks 
fourth as a mule producing state, being led by Texas 
with 700,000, Missouri 325,000, and Tennessee 290,- 
000. Over at Tompkinsville, a few days ago, a 
trader purchased thirteen head of mules and paid 
an even $2,000 for them. 

But mules are not all the things sold on county 
court day. Here comes a man with a couple of 
negro helpers driving a dozen head of cattle. He 
is also in need of some ready cash, possibly to make 
another payment on his hill farm. The bunch of 
cattle is a likely looking one. Good, big steers, 
two-year-olds, fit almost for the beef trust. He 
drives them over to a side street and the negro 
helpers herd them until the owner can go over to 
the court house square and find a buyer. Only a 
few days ago, at a neighboring county seat, more 



than 700 head of cattle were disposed of on county 
court day at prices ranging from five to eight cents 
per pound. 

One might think we were talking about a 
monthly market day instead of county court day. 
Well, we did almost forget it, because of the many 
things that detract from the real subject. How- 
ever, at nine o'clock we hear the bell in the tower 
of the court house calling those who are interested 
in the cases that will be brought before Judge 
Bohannon. Lawyers may be seen hurrying across 
the street to the county building. Over in the 
court house yard sits a group of sturdy Anglo- 
Saxons, squatted about in a small circle. Some have 
their jack-knives out, whittling. They may be wit- 
nesses in some case that will be called this morning, 
only to be continued, perhaps, until the next ses- 
sion, a month away. 

Hello! Who are these two people just driving 
in? They turn in toward one of the numerous 
hitch racks about the public square. It can be seen 
that their drive has not been a short one, for the 
horse they are driving drops his weary head, takes 
a long breath, as much as to say : "Well, I'm darned 
glad we're here." The young man jumps out of the 
buggy and ties Old Dobbin securely to a post. The 
bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked young lady who still re- 
mains seated in the vehicle looks about on all sides, 
as much as to say, "My, what a big place this is, 
and I never seen so many people in my lifetime ex- 
cept the time when pap and mother driv' to town 
when Lem Grigsby was tried for killin' Big Jim 
Hartsook." 



She is suddenly awakened from her breath of 
sight-seeing by her gallant, who brightly speaks up : 
"Well, ain't you goin' to git out?" She smiles at 
him and then makes ready to leap to the ground, 
the willing arms of her young man waiting to re- 
ceive her. They look at one another, and their eyes 
meet. In them was that something — that inexpress- 
able thing which appears in the eyes of young lovers 
whose hearts are beating for one another. Our 
young couple turn about and start for the gates 
that open up the pathway through the wide yard to 
the portals of justice. Once inside the big red brick 
building, they look about for that sign — "Clerk's 
Office." If you will read the next issue of the local 
paper, over in an obscure corner you will find the 
items from Split Rock, which nervously tells of the 
weddin'. 

County court day in Kentucky is one great day. 




A Tradition of Abraham Lincoln 




HE tradition of the birth of Abraham 
Lincoln which we give below was told 
to us, but as for its accuracy or truth- 
fulness we cannot vouch. It seems 
to be almost absurd, as well as an 
impossibilty, when we come to re- 
member the life of the greatest 
American citizen and patriot. We 
are recounting this as told, and we 
are doing so as the story is entirely 
new to us, and no doubt will be to 
those who read it, while down in 
this section it is common property. 
About the middle of the seventeenth century 
there was a family of three boys, by the name of 
Enloe, who came to the United States from England. 
They settled in Maryland, and while there followed 
the profession of school teaching. They were tall, 
raw-boned fellows, a little dark in complexion, and 
of Scotch descent, and all had large families. They 
left Maryland and went South, one settling in East 
Tennessee, near the Kentucky line, and he had a 
son who represented the Eighth Congressional Dis- 
trict five times. The other brothers settled in York, 
South Carolina. One had a son who went to north 
Georgia and entered the practice of law and later 
became judge of the county court. He went up into 
Rutherford county, N. C, and married into one of 
the best families of that section, by the name of 
Eaginton, or Edginton. They were the parents of 
fifteen children. 



In their locality was an orphan girl by the name 
of Nancy Hanks; how or why she became such, no 
one can tell. Mr. Enloe and his good wife gave her 
a home as one of the family. Mr. Enloe left Ruther- 
ford county and settled in Buncombe, a new county 
taken off from the extremely large county of Burke. 
After Mr. Enloe had lived in Buncombe a short time, 
one of his daughters, by the name of Nancy, went to 
visit her East Tennessee kin, and while there was 
courted and married to a Mr. Thompson, of Ken- 
tucky. This created great dissatisfaction with the 
Enloe family, for they were greatly displeased at 
the marriage. Some time after this the girl Nancy 
Hanks was making a great deal of trouble for Mr. 
Enloe and his wife, and was sent from their home to 
a family who lived on Jonathan's creek. Their 
daughter, Mrs. Thompson, was invited to come home 
and she would be forgiven. When Mr. and Mrs. 
Thompson made preparations to return home, 
through the influence of Mr. Felix Walker, who was 
at that time the congressman from that district, 
and was an intimate friend of the Enloe family, 
Nancy Hanks was sent to Kentucky. In a few 
months she was the mother of a boy child and called 
him Abraham. The child was three or four years 
old before its mother became acquainted with Thom- 
as Lincoln, whom she afterward married. Lincoln 
was about fifteen years her senior and she died 
when her boy was about nine years of age. 

When Mr. Lincoln was president, he wrote Mrs. 
Thompson, in Kentucky, if he could offer her a posi- 
tion under him, and she replied that she was too old 
and to give the place he had intended for her to one 

10 



of her boys, which Mr. Lincoln did. When he went 
to Washington, Mr. Allen T. Davidson asked him 
where he was from, and the young man replied, 
"Kentucky." "Then you are after your mother's 
part of the Enloe estate?" he was asked. They then 
had a talk concerning Mr. Lincoln, and the young 
man informed Mr. Davidson that he was holding a 
position under the President. Davidson wanted to 
know how that could be, when he was a Kentucky 
Democrat. The young man stated that Lincoln was 
under some obligations to his mother. 

When Mr. Davis, of Illinois, was about to make 
a trip through the South, Mr. Lincoln was a candi- 
date for the presidency. He said to Mr. Davis: "I 
understand you are going South. You can be of 
service to me, as I am of Southern extraction my- 
self. My name should have been Abe Enloe, but I 
was given the name of Lincoln, who was my step- 
father." 

Mr. Enloe lived until after the war and had some 
fifteen or twenty slaves freed. Mrs. A. Williams, of 
Hardin county, Kentucky, makes the statement that 
her father, John Finch, tells this tradition, and her 
grandmother attended Nancy Hanks when Abraham 
was born. She says she has often heard her father 
say that he had known Abraham Lincoln from his 
birth to the Presidency. 



11 



Lincoln's True Life Story 




the average American 
the foregoing story would 
seem an absurdity — a 
blasphemy upon the name of the 
greatest American. If the above 
is true, history knows nothing of 
it. The writer has made diligent 
search through libraries for even 
a slight confirmation of the tra- 
dition, but nothing could be found. 

In 1894, at the suggestion of Mr. S. S. McClure 
and Mr. J. S. Philips, editors of McClure's Magazine, 
a work was started and it was their desire to add to 
our knowledge of Abraham Lincoln by collecting 
and preserving the reminiscences of such of his con- 
temporaries as were then living. It was determined 
to spare neither labor nor money to complete the 
work in all its details. They established in their 
editorial rooms what might have been called a Lin- 
coln Bureau, and from there an organized search 
was made for historical facts, reminiscences, pic- 
tures and documents. Hundreds of persons from all 
parts of the country replied to their inquiries. In 
every case the clews thus obtained were diligently 
investigated. 

Ida M. Tarbell, one of the well-known writers of 
this country, was selected to complete a history of 
Abraham Lincoln that would be accurate, truthful 
and thorough. She wrote thousands of letters and 
traveled thousands of miles in collecting the ma- 
terial that went to make up the four volumes. The 



12 



work thus became one in which the whole country 
co-operated. 

Documents were presented establishing clearly 
that Lincoln's mother was not the nameless girl she 
had been so generally believed. His father, Thomas 
Lincoln, is shown to be more than the shiftless "poor 
white," and Lincoln's early life, if hard and crude, 
to have been full of honest, cheerful effort at better- 
ment. The sensational account of his running away 
from his own wedding, accepted generally by his- 
torians, is shown to be false. 

In direct contradiction of this "tradition of Lin- 
coln," we are going to sketch through the first 
chapter of this work published by the Lincoln His- 
torical Society and prove that this absurd story is 
entirely without foundation. We are giving facts, 
while the other is only a tradition. 

Samuel, Daniel and Thomas Lincoln, brothers, 
came from the west of England between the years 
of 1635 and 1645 and settled in the town of Hing- 
ham, Massachusetts. The two latter died in later 
years without heirs. Samuel left a large family, 
including four sons. Among the descendants of 
Samuel Lincoln's sons were many good citizens and 
prominent public officers. Levi Lincoln, a great- 
great-grandson of Samuel, born in 1749, graduated 
from Harvard, was one of the "minute-men" at 
Cambridge, was a delegate to the convention at 
Cambridge for framing a state constitution and was 
elected to the Continental Congress, but declined to 
serve. He was a menber of the House of Represen- 
tatives and the Senate of Massachusetts, and was 
appointed later as Attorney-General of the U. S. by 

13 



President Jefferson. In 1807 was elected lieutenant- 
governor of Massachusetts. In 1811 was appointed 
associate justice of the U. S. Supreme Court by- 
President Madison, an office which he declined. 
From the close of the Revolutionary War he was 
considered the head of the Massachusetts bar. 

This is the early history of Abraham Lincoln's 
ancestors. We will now bring our story nearer to 
the subject of the sketch, by investigating the life 
of the parents and grandparents of Abraham Lin- 
coln. 

The second Mordecai Lincoln had a son named 
Abraham, and to him his father conveyed in 1773 
a tract of 210 acres in Rockingham county, Virginia. 
He prospered and added to his wealth. Later he 
heard of the rich western land called Kentucky. He 
caught the western fever and sold his Virginia land 
and joined a party of travelers to the wilderness. 
Returning a few months later, he moved his whole 
family, consisting of his wife and five children, into 
Kentucky, settling on Long Run, in Jefferson county. 
All went well with him and his family until 1788. 
Then, one day while he and his three sons were at 
work in their clearing an unexpected Indian shot 
and killed the father. His death was a terrible blow 
to the family. 

Soon after the death of Abraham Lincoln, his 
widow moved from Jefferson county to Washington 
county. Here the eldest son, Mordecai, who inher- 
ited nearly all of the large estate, became a well- 
to-do and popular citizen. The deed book of Wash- 
ington county contains a number of records of lands 
bought and sold by him. At one time he was sheriff 

14 



of his county, and according to a tradition of his 
descendants, a member of the Kentucky legislature. 

The death of Abraham Lincoln was saddest for 
the youngest of the family, a lad of ten years at the 
time, named Thomas, for it turned him adrift to 
become a "wandering labor boy" before he had 
learned even to read. Thomas seems not to have 
inherited any of his father's estate, and from the 
first to have been obliged to shift for himself. He 
learned the carpenter's trade and became one of the 
best workmen in that locality. 

By careful saving he managed to buy a farm in 
Hardin county, Kentucky. This fact is of impor- 
tance, proving as it does that Thomas Lincoln was 
not the altogether shiftless man he had been pic- 
tured. Certainly he must have been above the 
grade of the ordinary country boy, to have had the 
energy and ambition to learn a trade and secure a 
farm through his own efforts by the time he was 
twenty-five. 

In 1806 Thomas Lincoln married Nancy Hanks. 
The early history of his wife has been, until re- 
cently, obscured by contradictory traditions. The 
compilation of the genealogy of the Hanks family in 
America, which has been completed by Mrs. Caro- 
line Hanks Hitchcock, though not yet printed, has 
fortunately cleared up the mystery of her birth. 
According to the records which Mrs. Hitchcock has 
gathered and a brief summary of which she has 
published in a little volume called "Nancy Hanks," 
the family to which Thomas Lincoln's wife belonged 
first came to this country in 1699 and settled in 
Plymouth, Massachusetts. 

15 



This early settler, Benjamin Hanks, had eleven 
children, one of whom, William, went to Virginia, 
settling near the mouth of the Rappahannock river. 
William Hanks had five sons, four of whom, about 
the middle of the eighteenth century, moved to 
Amelia county, Virginia, where, according to old 
deeds unearthed by Mrs. Hitchcock, they owned 
nearly a thousand acres of land. Joseph Hanks, the 
youngest of these sons, married Nancy Shipley. 
This Miss Shipley was a daughter of Robert and 
Rachel Shipley of Lurenburg county, Virginia, and 
a sister of Mary Shipley, who married Abraham 
Lincoln of Rockingham county, and who was the 
father of Thomas Lincoln. 

About 1789, Joseph Hanks and a large number 
of his relatives in Amelia county moved into Ken- 
tucky, where he settled near what is now Elizabeth- 
town. He remained here until his death in 1793. 
Joseph Hanks' will may still be seen in the county 
records of Bardstown. 

Soon after Joseph Hanks' death his wife died 
and the family scattered. The youngest of the eight 
children left fatherless and motherless by the death 
of Joseph Hanks and his wife was a little girl, called 
Nancy. She was but nine years old at the time, 
and a home was found for her with her aunt, Lucy 
Shipley, wife of Richard Berry. Nancy had a large 
number of relatives near there, all of whom had 
come from Virginia with her father. The little 
girl grew up into a sweet-tempered and beautiful 
woman, whom tradition paints not only as the cen- 
ter of all the country merry-making, but as a fa- 
mous spinner and housewife. 

16 



It was probably at the house of Richard Berry 
that Thomas Lincoln met Nancy Hanks, for he 
doubtless spent more or less time near by with his 
oldest brother, Mordecai Lincoln, who was a resi- 
dent of Washington county and a friend and neigh- 
bor of the Berrys. At all events, the two cousins 
became engaged and on the 10th day of June, 1806, 
their marriage bond was issued according to the 
law of the time. Two days later, according to the 
marriage returns of the Reverend Jesse Head, they 
were married — a fact duly attested also by the mar- 
riage certificate made out by the officiating minis- 
ter. The marriage took place at the home of Rich- 
ard Berry, near Beechland in Washington county, 
Kentucky. 

According to Dr. Christopher Columbus Graham, 
an entertaining Kentucky centenarian, the event 
was celebrated in great style. He tells how he 
heard of the wedding while "out hunting for roots," 
and went "just to get a good supper." Mr. Graham 
continues : "I saw Nancy Hanks at her wedding — a 
fresh looking country girl, I should say over twenty. 
I was at the infare, too, given by John H. Parrott, 
her guardian — and only girls with money had guar- 
dians appointed by the court." 

After his marriage Thomas Lincoln settled in 
Elizabethtown. His home was a log cabin, but at 
that date few people in the state had anything else. 
It was here that the first child of the Lincolns, a 
daughter, was born. Soon after this event, Thomas 
Lincoln decided to combine farming with his trade 
and moved to the farm he had bought in 1803, on 
the Big South fork of Nolin creek, in Hardin county, 

17 



now LaRue county, three miles from Hodgensville, 
and about fourteen miles from Elizabethtown. Here 
he was living when, on February 12, 1809, his sec- 
ond child, a boy, was born. The little newcomer 
was called Abraham, after his grandfather — a name 
which had persisted through many preceding gen- 
erations of both the Lincoln and Hanks families. 

We leave the story with you, gentle reader, to 
judge as to its truthfulness. History tells us that 
the tradition of Abraham Lincoln's birth is untrue 
and without foundation. 




The Heart of Tobaccodom 

HERE is a section of 
country down in the 
southern central part 
of Kentucky where to- 
bacco is the principal 
crop grown by the 
farmers. In the coun- 
-^Sfe^g** 5 ** ^ties of Barren, Hart, 
Monroe, Metcalf and Allen lies some of the best 
tobacco land, that especially good for raising Burley 
leaf, to be found anywhere in the United States. 
The fact is that practically ninety-nine out of a 
hundred farmers in this section grow tobacco. A 
man may own ten acres or a thousand, and invari- 
ably you will find a tobacco patch located somewhere 
on his land, even though it be a small one, raising 
enough possibly to supply his individual needs. The 
real fact is that they make tobacco a principal crop. 

18 



We might say here, in the way of a mild criti- 
cism, that the average farmer in southern Ken- 
tucky is not much of a hustler. He will have a farm 
of possibly eighty acres of fairly tillable soil and 
especially rich in the little valleys and draws about 
the place. He looks for the richest soil and plants 
a crop of tobacco, anywhere from three to ten acres, 
plants a small patch of corn, and his farming is 
completed, except the gathering of the crops in the 
fall. When his tobacco crop has been harvested 
and placed in the barn to cure, he eagerly waits 
until the markets open so that he can take it to 
town and dispose of it. The biggest part of his time 
during the year is spent at the little crossroads 
store, where he will go early and stay late, and 
there he will meet his neighbors who seem bent 
upon the same errand as he — just to put in the time. 
If these natives could only be awakened to the fact 
that their farms hold untold riches in the soil, and 
that by simply getting down to work and sticking 
to it, that they have a fortune within their grasp, 
they would soon learn that later they could assume 
a life of ease. Plant more acres of tobacco — there 
is a market for every pound they can raise and at 
prices that pay to produce it. Plant more fields of 
corn. Better cattle should be roaming over their 
hills. Build silos adjacent to the barns for caring 
for the most valuable feed in the world for their 
stock. This is the opportunity offered the average 
Kentucky farmer. Why they cannot see this is a 
mystery to us. When you find a man in that coun- 
try who is farming his place by the most approved 
methods you will see a man whose bank account is 

19 



of no small consequence. There is certainly a wide 
field for reform in agricultural lines in Kentucky, 
and, in a way, the people are awakening to the fact 
that their farms there can be made to produce larger 
and better crops by making the calling of a farmer 
a real profession. 

The tobacco crop this year will not reach that of 
last year as to quantity, but there will be more 
money paid for it than was paid last year. The dry 
weather last year was detrimental to the tobacco 
crop. 

Last year at Glasgow, which is one of the larg- 
est and best markets in the state, more than 13,000- 

000 pounds of the weed passed through the two large 
warehouses located there. The average price paid 
was about ten cents per pound. This would mean 
that the farmers of that section realized over 
$1,000,000 for their crop. 

It is not an unusual thing for a single warehouse 
to handle 75,000 pounds of tobacco in a single day. 
A farmer brings a load of tobacco to market, often 
driving from 25 to 40 miles, and may have to stay 
in town two or three days before he can make a 
sale, on account of the number of other loads ahead 
of him at the warehouse. 

The tobacco warehouses have large sheds for 
housing the farmers' teams, and they themselves 
find accommodations at the many hotels and board- 
ing houses in the town. It was while stopping at 
one of these hotels that I learned the many things 

1 am telling you about in this story. 

They grow tobacco down in Kentucky, as we 
mentioned above, and they use it, too. Not the 

20 



store-boughten kind, the "sweet tobacco," as they 
say, but the real, genuine, old hillside navy. When 
they gather around the fire in the evening, practic- 
ally every man or boy will pull out his twist of 
tobacco and take a chew, or cut off the filling for 
his pipe. They enjoy it, too. Well, why shouldn't 
they? They raised it and know its quality— the best. 




The Kentucky ' Tin-Hooker' ' 

HEN I first came down into this country I 
often heard the term "pinhooker" used. It 
sounded rather funny to me to hear them 
say : "Why, that fellow is a pinhooker." I was the 
least bit timid about asking for an explanation. 
The good things always come to him who waits, so 
I waited — and found out without asking. 

The term "pinhooker," as applied down here, in 
a way, means a small broker in tobacco. To go into 
a fuller explanation, it means simply this : The to- 
bacco growers drive to market with their loads of 
tobacco, which may be either Burley or the dark 
leaf. When they get to the warehouses they find 
them full to overflowing with loads ahead of them, 
and it may mean a stay of two or three days for 
them, providing they cannot get on the sales floor 
with their crop. It is here that the wily "pinhooker" 
gets in his work. He sights the fellows driving up 
with their loads and is after them to buy their crops, 
offering them, of course, prices less than they would 
obtain on the market. He is the go-between, provid- 
ing the planter don't care if he loses some on his 

21 



load and the "pinhooker" gets the rakeoff. And, by 
the way, some of these small brokers make nice 
sums of money during the buying season by their 
"pinhooking" methods. 




Why the Open Door? 

IT DOES NOT matter what part of the 
country you go into, you always find 
different ways, manners and customs. 
Some of them appear strange to us, 
simply because we are not accustomed 
to them. Others appear ridiculous and often laugh- 
able. One very amusing thing came to my attention 
while stopping at one of the hotels in Glasgow. I 
could not help but notice that nine out of ten per- 
sons who either came into or went out of the hotel 
office, invariably left the door open, regardless of 
the condition of the weather on the outside. A man 
will walk in, leave the door open, and then "squat" 
in a chair and pull himself up to the stove in the 
middle of the room. I never had the nerve to tell 
one of them to close the door, but I often wanted to. 



They're Pure Blooded Anglo-Saxons 

K -KENTUCKY'S early settlers were largely de- 
scendants of those who came to the colonies 
SBM from England. The wealth of richness of 
the soil in this new country brought them to this 
wilderness and it was here that they made their 
future homes. The population of Kentucky is not 
cosmopolitan. You do not find the mixture of races 

22 



as in other parts of this country — the Germans, 
Swedes, Polanders and Italians are conspicuous for 
their absence. 

You do find, however, the purest Anglo-Saxon 
blood. They are, as a general thing, true Kentuck- 
ians — the same blood that coursed through the 
veins of Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett and other pio- 
neers who settled in the wilderness of Kentucky. 
The average Kentuckian is proud of his blood-breed- 
ing and they are justly entitled to their belief. They 
are a hospitable people and will always give you a 
hearty welcome in their homes. If you should chance 
to be an enemy, their hatred for you is just as 
bitter in comparison. This seems to be the general 
characteristic of the average Kentuckian. 

Kentucky is forging forward in an educational 
way. Its school system is being constantly improved. 
The future boy or girl who claims this state as a 
birthplace will have good reasons to feel proud of 
the great strides that are being made along this 
line. Education is the world's greatest civilizer. 

In the isolated districts, where formerly schools 
were almost unknown, you will find comfortable 
buildings erected for the boys and girls whose par- 
ents were not given the opportunities for a common 
school education. 

A campaign is now being inaugurated to free the 
state of Kentucky from adult illiteracy by 1920. 
This is being conducted by the Women's Forward 
Kentucky Movement, and began in Louisville. Mass 
meetings and lectures form a conspicuous part of 
the plans to arouse interest in the necessity for such 
a campaign. The churches are taking up the work, 

23 



and it is hoped that much good will be accomplished. 
There is a splendid reason for such a movement, 
if the reports of the government census are true, 
and we can hardly dispute them. In 1910 the re- 
ports showed that in the state of Kentucky alone 
there were 208,000 persons unable to read and write, 
of whom 87,500 are males of 21 years and over. 



General Simon Boliver Buckner 

fTp^ENTUCKY has produced some of the Nation's 
I XV greatest men. Its environments are such 
PSS? that its name in the world's history of great 
men is deeply etched in the rocks of time, never to 
be effaced — whose renown reaches from the Great 
Lakes to the Gulf and from Coast to Coast. 

It is a noticeable fact, not alone in this state, but 
throughout the length and breadth of this great land 
of ours, the dearth of truly great men — statesmen. 
We do not have Blaine from Maine, Blackburn from 
Kentucky, Ingalls from Kansas, Mills from Texas, 
Wade Hampton of South Carolina, and hosts of 
others whose names when mentioned sounded like 
the silvery tones of heavenly music. Their appear- 
ance in any part of the country meant great gather- 
ings of people who would come to listen to the won- 
drous flights of oratory, such as of which there is 
no record. 

A few days ago marks the exit in the history of 
Kentucky of the earthly remains of one of her 
greatest sons and soldiers — General Simon Boliver 
Buckner, hero of two wars, who died at his home at 

24 



Glen Lily, a short distance from Munfordville, in 
Hart county. This great warrior fought for his 
country during the war with Mexico. When the 
South withdrew from the Union in 1861, General 
Buckner, true to his convictions, offered his services 
to the Confederate States, and few rose to that em- 
inent position which he held when the great unpleas- 
antness was a matter of history. 

William Jennings Bryan's first candidacy for 
President caused a separation in the ranks of the 
Democrat party of those opposed to his ideas of 
free silver, and the same year those believing in a 
gold standard of monetary values organized the Gold 
Democrat party and nominated General Buckner as 
their candidate for the Vice-Presidency, along with 
General Palmer for President, but the strength of 
the party was not sufficient to carry it to success. 

General Buckner was the last surviving Lieuten- 
ant-General of the Confederate Army. He was a 
graduate of West Point Military Academy, a mem- 
ber of the United States Army for ten years; for 
four years was Governor of the State of Kentucky, 
and was also the organizer of the Kentucky State 
Guard. General Buckner was also the framer of an 
insurance law to eliminate wildcat insurance com- 
panies. 

Although in his ninety-first year, his mind was 
as clear as that of a young man. He was old phy- 
sically, but young in spirit. He did not live in the 
past, but in the present and the future. 

The death of General Buckner cast great shadows 
of gloom about the village which claimed his citizen- 
ship. He was known by all his friends and neighbors 

25 



as a truly great friend, always willing to do and help 
any who would come to him. He was always alert 
to any condition brought to his notice that would be 
a benefit to his locality or his fellow men. He was 
the one great counselor of that country, for his ad- 
vice was always taken and followed to the letter. 
When the announcement of his death came to the 
village, the place had spread over it a mantle of 
mourning — they had lost a true friend. 

His remains were laid to rest in the Frankfort 
cemetery, a few feet from the great monument that 
commemorates the heroic dead of the Mexican war. 
As the funeral procession filed past the Arsenal, 
twenty-one guns were fired in honor of the Ken- 
tucky hero. 

While the funeral train was on its way to Frank- 
fort, it slowed down as though to stop at Anchorage, 
and the passengers peering out of the windows saw, 
lined up for salute, sixteen men in gray uniforms, 
inmates of the Confederate Home at Pewee Valley. 
The train stopped and then sixteen grizzled veterans 
filed into the train and marched to a compartment 
that had been reserved for them. They had intended 
marching from the train at Frankfort to the ceme- 
tery, but were induced to take carriages. These 
veterans had served under the command of General 
Buckner during the civil war. 

We had the pleasure of talking to Mr. John Mur- 
ray, of Glasgow, who was with General Buckner at 
Fort Donelson. He attended the funeral of the 
Kentucky hero, and keeps no memory nearer to his 
heart than that of the sight of his general standing 
on a veranda at Fort Donelson, waving his hand at 

26 



the boys as they passed by in review, bidding them 
to be of good cheer, even in defeat. 

"That was the sort of an officer he was," said 
Mr. Murray. "He was always thinking about the 
boys in the trenches." Mr. Murray was one of the 
last to leave the side of General Buckner's grave at 
Frankfort. 



The Passing of the Ha'nt 

OOKING through the trees on yonder knob, 
you can see a tumble-down pile of rotted logs. 
There was a time when this was the humble 
home "of a small family that had settled here in the 
early days. Time was when it was almost impossible 
to get anyone to pass this place alone after nightfall, 
especially when the moon had hidden herself in the 
darkened quarter. Blood curdling stories were rife 
as to the awful tragedy that had occurred within the 
old log walls. 

The house was ha'nted. 

Sike Haines was born in the western part of 
North Carolina, in the mountain country. Across 
the rugged heights, down in a little valley on the 
other side, lived the Martins. Zelda Martin was the 
oldest child in the family and was of that peculiar 
type of personality not often seen in this mountain- 
ous country. 

Stories often describe the wondrous beauty of 
these mountain pinks — their wealth of long-flowing, 
chestnut hair, through which the breezes play hide 
and seek — cheeks likened unto the bloom of the wild 

27 



roses, and eyes that sparkle like the early dew- 
drops in the morning sun. Zelda Martin came near 
being one of these novelized creatures so often read 
about and seldom seen, for she was a woman of un- 
usual beauty. 

Sike Haines loved Zelda Martin. Their courtship 
extended through a few short years. At last the 
happy day came when he was to claim her for his 
bride. On the wedding morn the summer sun rose 
bright, creeping up from the eastern horizon in all 
his wondrous light. The ceremony was performed 
at Zelda's home in the boisterous style of a hundred 
years ago, and was followed by an infare given by 
the parents of the bride. To this celebration came 
all the neighbors and even those who happened to 
be in the neighborhood were made welcome. 

There was bear-meat, venison, wild turkey, maple 
sugar tied on a string to bite off for coffee or whis- 
key, syrup in big gourds, peach-and-honey, a sheep 
had been barbecued whole over coals of wood burned 
in a pit, and covered with green boughs to keep the 
juice in, and a race for a bottle of whiskey. 

It was a happy day for Sike and Zelda. They 
started their married life in a little log cabin on the 
mountain side not far distant from her parents. 
Stories had come to that particular locality of the 
wonderful fertile soil of the western country. The 
young couple were considering the possibilities of 
this western eldorado. Finally they decided to cast 
their lot in the new state of Kentucky. So one morn- 
ing in the early spring, they loaded their few earthly 
possessions into an old mountain wagon and started 
for their future home. 

28 



Sike Haines did not know that in former years 
his wife had had another sweetheart. Link Huey 
had been a suitor for her hand, but she had refused 
him. When the Haines had moved to Kentucky, un- 
beknown to them, Huey followed. He was fortunate 
enough to secure work in a neighborhood not far dis- 
tant from them. In some manner he learned that 
Sike had left home for the day to drive to Bowling 
Green to buy some needed supplies. This gave Huey 
the opportunity of calling on his old sweetheart. 
Zelda's surprise knew no bounds when she beheld 
Huey standing in the door of her little cabin home. 
She, with her natural Southern hospitality, welcom- 
ed him to their fireside, little knowing the reason 
for the unexpected call. They soon fell to talking of 
old associations back in North Carolina. Huey's 
love for his old sweetheart returned. It made him 
bold. In a little while he had approached her and 
started to take her in his arms. She repulsed him, 
but he persisted and she was worrying herself into 
a frenzy lest he should do her harm. 

At this crucial moment Sike Haines stepped into 
the doorway. His first thought was the treachery 
of his wife. Little thinking what he was doing and 
without a word, he waited not for an explanation, 
but raised the rifle that he carried in his hand 
to his shoulder, he aimed at his wife. In an instant 
the gun cracked. Zelda Haines dropped to the floor, 
the bullet passing entirely through her brain, caus- 
ing instant death. During this thrilling moment, 
Huey was making a determined effort to get out of 
the cabin, but Haines holding the defensive, had him 
at his vantage. Raising the rifle as a club, he start- 

29 



ed after Huey and in a moment had him cornered, 
for there was but one door in the room and Haines 
had closed it as soon as he came in. Haines struck 
at Huey once or twice, but the latter evaded the 
blows, but in trying to get behind the kitchen table, 
he slipped and fell to the floor and in an instant 
Haines was upon him with the fury of a maddened 
animal, clubbing him with the butt end of his rifle. 
In a moment Huey's life was snuffed out by a crash- 
ing blow from the crazed man. 

The floor was a pool of blood. On one side of the 
room lay the body of Zelda Haines; across in the 
opposite corner the inanimate remains of Huey lay 
in a gory heap. On the one bed in the room lay the 
year-old girl baby of Zelda Haines. The awful com- 
motion had set the child screaming at the top of its 
voice. This only served to enrage the maddened 
father and rushing to the bed he grasped the child 
by the legs and dashed out its brains against the 
heavy post of the old fashioned bed. The sight must 
have been a sickening one. 

Sike Haines was a raving maniac. Seeing the 
awful deed he had committed, he knew his own life 
would pay the penalty. In a moment he had grabbed 
up a butcher knife which lay upon a side table and 
in the next instant had slashed the sharp blade 
across his throat, cutting a gash almost from ear to 
ear, his life blood bursting out over his body, spat- 
tering the nearby walls, and forming in great pools 
where the body dropped. 

The next day, for the first time, the neighbors 
looked upon the gruesome sight. The bodies were 

30 



taken away and buried in a remote part of a nearby 
country churchyard. 

One night, a short time after the tragedy, some 
one in passing the Haines' cabin, is said to have seen 
the entire affair enacted by white, ghost-like objects. 
The story spread. Others said they had seen it or 
had seen strange, uncanny sights and heard hair- 
raising groans and shrieks. The house was ha'nted. 

From the day this awful deed was done and up 
to the present time, there has never a soul lived in 
the Haines cabin. 

In the early days, many stories were told of 
spooks and ha'nted houses. We never hear of them 
now, only as recounted by some of the older genera- 
tion. We have learned to know that such does not 
exist. If there should be things seeming to border 
on the supernatural, there is a cause for it, as is 
illustrated by the following little "spook" story. 

In a country not far distant from this locality, 
stood an old log church. It had not been used in 
years and was falling into decay. Some had said 
there were ha'nts here. There seemed to be no spe- 
cial cause for their inhabiting this dilapidated old 
place, unless the spirits from the nearby graveyard 
took up their abode in the decaying building merely 
for old times' sake. 

One Sabbath night a young man in the neighbor- 
hood was enjoying himself at the home of his sweet- 
heart. He did not realize the lateness of the hour, 
until it was midnight. Oh, how time does fly upon 
such an occasion. With the usual prolonged depar- 
ture he at last tore himself from the side of his 
sleepy-eyed sweetheart and started homeward, his 

31 



road leading past the deserted church. He realized 
suddenly that a heavy storm was approaching. The 
thunder rolled and the lightning flashed across the 
sky. It was a mid-summer thunder storm. Heavy 
rain drops began pelting the earth. The young man 
hurried toward his home, trusting that he might get 
there before the rain came. All of a sudden he re- 
membered the old graveyard he must pass. His 
flesh assumed a creepy nature and cold chills began 
to run races up and down his spinal column. What 
if he should see a spook? 

He quickened his steps. The rain was coming, 
for he could hear it in the distance. Just as he was 
opposite the old church there came a blinding sheet 
of lightning, followed by a tremendous crash of 
thunder. The rain fell in torrents. Seeking shelter, 
he ran into the old church building. It was dark out- 
side and he discovered that it was still darker on the 
inside. Just after passing the threshold of the door, 
he stumbled over some unseen object and was 
thrown violently to the dirt floor. 

Heavens, what a noise. The approach of a cav- 
alry troop dwindled into insignificance. A thousand 
somethings turned loose at one time. He tried to 
straighten up. His hair stood on end and he tried 
to penetrate the gloom to ascertain the cause of the 
awful commotion. He had it. He had solved the 
problem. He had broken up a meeting of the spooks. 

In a second, he was knocked down, run over, 
trampled under foot, beaten, kicked — scared almost 
to death. He now realized the cause of it all. He 
had hurriedly came into the building and disturbed 
the quiet meditations of a flock of sheep that had 

32 



sought the friendly shelter of the old log church and 
he had frightened them so badly that they had tried 
to make their exit from the building— all at one 
time— and he had passed through the excruciating 
agony of having the entire flock run over him in 
trying to get out of the building. 

So the spooks had nothing to do with it. 



A 



Kentucky's Bloody Soil 

T ONE TIME, in the early days, history has 
it, the soil of Kentucky was stained with 
blood. Not alone in the mountains of this 
c^nfonwealth, but throughout its length and 
breadth men have been killed, not always in feudal 
strife, but neighbors failed to agree, and as a result 
some lonely churchyard holds the remains of a man 
whose heart blood was taken to quench the spirit of 
revenge of his slayer. Nowadays there is not the 
frequency of these killings there was in earlier days. 
We can state, possibly without fear of contradic- 
tion, that the first hanging in Barren county occur- 
red in 1818. During that year a negro trader by the 
name of Sanderson came into this county from Ala- 
bama. In those days slaves sold at good prices and 
it was always necessary for the traders to carry 
large sums of money in their possession, from the 
fact that banks, in which to deposit their money, 
were few and far between. Dr. Hamilton, of this 
county, was a negro buyer and dealt largely in 
slaves at this time. Sanderson came here to make 
purchases and was well supplied with money, which 

33 



was principally in Alabama state bills. One morn- 
ing his dead body was found by the roadside in a 
clump of bushes. Near it was found a pistol which 
the evidence proved belonged to Dr. Hamilton. The 
serial numbers on the bills which had been in the 
possession of Sanderson were found noted on a slip 
of paper which was taken from the lining of Ham- 
ilton's hat. His explanation of this incident was 
that he had exchanged Kentucky state bank bills 
with Sanderson for Alabama bank bills, as he had 
intended making a slave purchasing trip to Alabama, 
and that he had made an even exchange in the 
money. Ordinarily when this exchange was made 
the bills from one state that was presented in an- 
other were always subject to a discount. Other cir- 
cumstantial evidence plainly showed that Hamilton 
was the murderer of Sanderson and for which crime 
he was handed in Glasgow in 1818. 

In later years, however, it developed that a Unit- 
ed States consul to Guatamala, in looking over the 
papers and effects of his predecessor, found a con- 
fession of a man who claimed he had killed Sander- 
son, which in a way exonerated Dr. Hamilton, yet 
there is no doubt, so we were told, that he was an 
accomplice in the crime. 

The above story is only one of the many that 
have occurred in the days gone by. We are now go- 
ing to relate another that occurred just recently, 
near the boundary line of Barren county, in the 
vicinty of Mount Hermon, a little inland settlement. 

Mrs. Lizzie Burnett, one of the wealthiest women 
of that section, was shot from ambush by an assas- 
sin and fatally wounded, at her home near Mount 

34 



Hermon. Mrs. Burnett was sitting by the window 
sewing, when some unknown person fired a shot 
through the window, the ball taking effect in her 
face and head. The screams of her two small child- 
ren attracted the attention of neighbors, who came 
and found the woman lying in a great pool of blood 
upon the floor. Medical aid was summoned at once, 
and at this writing her death may be expected at any 
time Mrs. Burnett lost her husband about a year 
ago he having met his death by being kicked by a 
mule. He was one of the most extensive farmers in 
that section of the country. 

The next day after the mysterious shooting, a 
wayward son of Mrs. Burnett's was arrested for the 
deed and it is believed that he is the guilty party 
who committed this dastardly crime. It has been 
learned that he had recently tried to force money 
from his mother, but she had refused to accede to 
his demands and would not let him have it. He had 
threatened her life in order to obtain it and this is 
supposed to have been the motif of the crime. He 
was of a wild disposition and made no pretense ot 
working and lived off of the means that he could 
force from his mother's hand. It is now thought, 
since his arrest, that they have the real perpetrator 
of the crime, and if such is the case, there is hardly 
a penalty severe enough for him to suffer to make 
amends for the killing of the woman he called his 
mother It is certainly deplorable to think that a 
human being could get so low as to commit so hein- 
ous a crime, and if guilty, should be made to suffer 
the most extreme penalty that the court could pos- 
sibly impose upon him. 

35 



Why this spirit of bloodshed prevails in this 
country we are at a loss to understand. One notice- 
able fact appears and that almost invariably, in the 
reckoning of some important event, it is always 
brought out in connection with some murder that 
occurred on the same day. The first event may have 
been forgotten, but the murder is still vivid in the 
minds of those who were here at the time it occurred. 
During our stay down in this country we have lis- 
tened to the recitals of murder cases that have oc- 
curred in days gone by, that should such happen 
now, in these days of yellow journalism, would fill 
their columns with thrilling and tragic stories that 
would not soon be forgotten. 



Still Waters Do Not Run 

"Wha' that yo'all savin'," said old Ab Maxwell, 
' 'bout still watah runnin' deep ? Now, sah, yo'all 
knows that still watah don't run anyhow. Ain't I 
right? 'Pears like most eve'ybody is always talkin' 
'bout still watah runnin' deep, but by gravy, I'se got 
my fust still watah to see that eveh moved a leetle 
teeny bit." 

And he walked away towards the blacksmith 
shop. 



36 



The Bootlegger's Paradise 

[ R 1ARREN COUNTY has had many offenders 
LPj against the law. At times, the culprits pay 
f^gR l the penalty. Many get by unscathed. For 
a long time Glasgow has been undergoing a small 
"reign of terror" in the way of petty offenders, 
largely those engaged in the illicit selling of liquor, 
more commonly called "bootlegging." Drunken men 
were seen reeling about on the streets at all hours 
of the day or night, yet there is not a saloon in the 
town. The festive bootlegger thrived on his ill- 
gotten gain. If you wanted to buy a bottle of liquor, 
it did not take you long to find the fellow who had 
a few quarts to dispose of. 

A new set of city officials were elected in 1914 
and given the keys of the town, and a general house- 
cleaning has been going on in Glasgow. The men 
who had acted in the capacity of peace officers 
seemed to have weak eyes, for it was pretty hard 
for them to determine just who were breaking the 
law. Since the change in city officials, there has 
been a complete renovation in police circles and good 
men were installed into office. City Marshal Doc 
Cooksey and Policemen Bob Thurman are largely 
responsible for making the crooked walk a straight- 
er path, these officers showing no mercy, and as a 
result of their vigilant work the city bastile has 
been the most densely populated place in the town. 

The day before Christmas, 1913, was a harvest 
for the liquor dealers in Louisville and New Albany, 
judging from the quantity that was received by 
the local express company for distribution. Upon 

37 



the arrival of the morning train, it required two 
large drays to haul away the packages that were 
shipped in, which were consigned to residents of 
Glasgow and vicinity. 

During the flourishing bootlegging times, many 
little tricks were resorted to to pull hard earned 
dollars away from the fellow who was pining for a 
drink of liquor. Boys were largely responsible for 
these impositions. They would collect quart whis- 
key bottles that were scattered promisciously about 
the streets and alleys and fill them with a weakened 
solution of coffee or diluted vinegar. With the bril- 
liant label of some popular brand of whiskey still 
remaining on the bottle, these fellows would find a 
ready sale for their concoction. But, oh my, how the 
buyer would "cuss" when he found that he had been 
made the victim of this illicit method of selling. He 
was wise enough, however, to not say anything 
about being bitten in the bargain which he had so 
cleverly drove, as he thought. The seller very easily 
realized from a dollar to a dollar and a half for every 
bottle he could dispose of. 



Bob Thurman, Policeman 



G—1LASGOW has not always been a good town, 
lawfully. In recent years, since the saloons 
^^ were voted from its corporate limits, the 
festive bootlegger has flourished. In January, 1914, 
the new city council decided that drastic measures 
were necessary to eradicate this growing evil. For- 
mer guardians of the town's welfare had been lax 

38 



in their efforts to stop this practice. It seemed that 
they had a "stand-in" with these unlawful dispens- 
ers of intoxicants. 

Glasgow is the distributing point for a large 
country. Mail order liquor houses thrived from the 
business sent them from this section. They had 
local agents who solicited great volumes of business. 
Liquor was shipped here in large quantities. The 
town was getting the reputation of being one of the 
worst liquor-ridden places in that section of the 
state. It was absolutely necessary to take imme- 
diate action to stop this illegal traffic. 

Over at Edmonton, Bob Thurman had the repu- 
tation of being a man who would enforce the law at 
all hazards. Glasgow was sadly in need of such a 
man, and he was appointed to fill the place of police- 
man. From the very start he made good. He was 
a terror to the evil doer. Rich or poor, black or 
white, all looked alike to him, if the law was being 
violated. This made him many enemies. There 
were among those who were opposed to his methods, 
many that should have been his friends. There 
were men ready and anxious to kill him, so strong 
had become their hatred for him, if they could only 
get the "drop" on him. 

There were rumors that Bob Thurman was in 
danger of being assassinated — that he was a marked 
man, an officer doomed to death by the lawless ele- 
ment, the bootlegger, the whiskey seller and their 
followings. Groups of citizens would gather to- 
gether, discuss present conditions, and invariably 
close their discussion with the agreement that 
"Thurman is in danger of assassination," for the 

39 



sole and simple reason that he was doing his duty 
without fear or favor. 

The agitation became so strong that it was nec- 
essary for the city council to pass resolutions asking 
that the good and law-abiding citizens stand by the 
administration and help sustain the work being done 
by Policeman Bob Thurman. The local newspapers 
urged and advocated that the law be upheld at all 
hazards. 

Policeman Bob Thurman came to Glasgow with 
a good record. During his career he had been a 
deputy sheriff in a neighboring county and served 
faithfully his trust as a peace officer. Necessity 
forced him to kill a bad man in defense of his own 
life. He was later employed at Burksville as town 
marshal and while serving in this capacity was com- 
pelled to kill "Bud" McCandless while in the dis- 
charge of his duty. McCandless had previously 
killed Judge George P. Pierce, one of the prominent 
citizens of Metcalfe county, in a desperate shooting 
affray. Thurman was tried in the Barren county 
court at Glasgow for shooting McCandless, but was 
easily acquitted of the charge of murder which had 
been placed against him. 

Bob Thurman was making good in Glasgow and 
he was also making many enemies. He was trying 
to do what was right and that which was his re- 
ligious duty as an officer of the law. His enemies 
were biding their time when they might "get even" 
with him. Their vigilance was rewarded. 

About 12 o'clock, on Friday night, September 18, 
1914, Thurman received a telephone message calling 
him to Page Heights, as some disorderly persons 

40 



BOB THURMAN, POLICEMAN 



were disturbing the neighborhood. He located the 
trouble at the house of a family named Chism, the 
women of which bore a very unsavory name. When 
Thurman entered the house, he found Louie Pace, a 
printer employed at the Times office, in a half 
drunken condition, and promptly arrested him. It 
developed in the evidence later that Pace had gone 
to this disreputable house in company with Milton 
Mansfield, a local blacksmith. Both men had been 
drinking during the evening and finally wound up 
late at night at the Chism house. Their liquor- 
crazed minds were right for a disturbance. The 
noise at the lateness of the hour aroused the neigh- 
bors and a small boy had run across to Charles 
Tolle's and telephoned Policeman Thurman. 

Before the officer arrived, Mansfield left the 
house and concealed himself in the heavy shadows 
of a nearby tree. Thurman started to the jail with 
Pace and Mansfield followed along behind, and when 
near the Cartright place, adjacent to the public 
square, Mansfield rushed up and tried to interfere 
with the officer so that his prisoner might make his 
escape. Mansfield claimed that during the scuffle 
which followed, Thurman struck him over the head 
with a revolver and the blow caused the discharge of 
the weapon, the bullet therefrom entering Thur- 
man's body just below the heart under the left arm, 
coming out a little lower down on the right side, 
death ensuing in a few moments after the fatal shot 
was fired. Thurman's dying groans could be heard 
several blocks away, and was said to have been 
heart-rending. 

A man and wife living in a nearby house heard 
41 



the shot fired and rushed to their door in time to 
see both Pace and Mansfield brutally kicking the 
prostrate body of the dying Thurman, one of them 

saying, "Die like a dog, die hard, G d you, 

you'll never pinch anybody again." 

Both men were placed under arrest for the mur- 
der. A court of inquiry was soon called, while the 
facts of the crime were fresh in the minds of the 
witnesses and before influence could be brought to 
bear to cause any of them to forget what they had 
seen. The evidence given at the court of inquiry 
showed sufficient cause that the men be held for trial 
at the November term of court. 

Hundreds of people viewed the remains of Bob 
Thurman as they lay in the morgue of the Jewell 
Undertaking Co. On Sunday, the body was taken by 
relatives to his former home in Clinton county and 
laid to rest in the family burying ground. Had Bob 
Thurman lived, he would have been married on this 
Sunday, when all that was left of him was placed 
in the cold, cold ground. The bride-to-have-been was 
a most estimable young woman and her sorrow for 
the death of this loved one was more than pen can 
describe. The deceased had been married and was 
a widower and was the father of two children — a 
daughter of sixteen and a son of eleven years. 

At the November term of the Barren county 
court, Milt Mansfield was placed on trial for the 
murder. Finally, after examining over two hundred 
men, a jury was empanneled and the case begun. 
Never in the history of the county had a murder 
trial attracted such wide-spread attention as this 
one. The large court room was packed to overflow 

42 



at every session, and on the day that the lawyers 
plead their sides, standing room was at a premium. 
The evidence showed that Mansfield was guilty of 
the crime. It is said that when the first ballot was 
taken by the jury, eight of the talesmen favored the 
electric chair. On the second ballot, eleven stood 
for the death penalty. A compromise was effected 
and a verdict returned giving him a life sentence. 
Mansfield's attorneys immediately asked for a new 
trial, which is certainly a hazardous proceeding for 
him, as it is not likely he will fare as well next time. 
His friends feel, however, that as the verdict now 
stands and should he be sent to the penitentiary, he 
may, in a few years be paroled, while taking chances 
with another jury is risky to say the least. 

The trial of Louie Pace, Mansfield's accomplice 
in the crime, will be brought up at the March term 
of court. After Mansfield had been sentenced and 
had been returned to the jail, he told Pace what the 
verdict was. The latter solemnly remarked: "Well, 
I guess they'll give me about the same dose." 

This practically brings to a close one of the 
most atrocious crimes ever committed in the 
state of Kentucky. Sentiment ran at topmost 
height. In case the law did not deal out justice to 
these men, the local newspapers strongly advocated 
mob violence that the people might be awakened to 
their sense of duty and good citizenship. 

Ctae local paper speaks editorially: "If Glasgow 
cannot clean her own house, or protect herself, there 
are enough good men — determined men — in Barren 
county to do the work for her. But the damnable 
shame of it." 

43 



Since the murder occurred, things have quieted 
down. Those who were offenders against the law 
have stopped their unlawful practices. A lesson has 
been learned. Right has triumped, even though at 
the cost of human blood. 



He Had the Swollen of the Face 



U 



NCLE TOBE DICKEY lives over near Cave 
City and is one of the old-timers in that 
section of the country. Everybody in those 
parts knows Uncle Tobe and you are missing a great 
treat if you don't know him. He sometimes gets 
mixed on English as she is spoke, but he always 
manages to have you understand what he is trying 
to get at. 

Not long since, Uncle Tobe went over to Glasgow 
to "pinhook" a little in the tobacco business. He 
never could resist the temptation to try to pick up 
a few dollars in that manner, if the opportunity 
came his way. Uncle Tobe has bad teeth and they 
give him a great deal of trouble. He had been suf- 
fering with neuralgia for several days and the right 
side of his face was considerably swollen. Someone 
asked him what was the matter. 

"Well, sah," replied Uncle Tobe, 'Tse suff'rin' 
with the swollen of the face, and I want to go to a 
dentist, but I can't do it till I gits over the swollen." 



44 



s 



The Treasure of Marrowbone 

TORIES of buried treasure are always inter- 
esting. If you have been fortunate enough 
to read Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Treasure 
Island," you will agree that tales of this character 
are more than fascinating. We are going to relate a 
story which proved more than interesting to us 
when we heard it, but as to its truthfulness, we can- 
not vouch. 

Kin Harkles lived in a dilapidated log cabin in 
the "knob" country near the dividing line between 
Metcalf and Cumberland counties, about midway be- 
tween Marrowbone and Willow Shade. Ab Green 
had the only store at the former place and it was 
here that Harkles spent most of his time when not 
out with rifle and hounds looking for game. 

Kin had the reputation of being rather a worth- 
less fellow and would not work except when neces- 
sity compelled him to do so. Oftimes his neighbors 
complained about losing corn from their corn-cribs 
and meat from their smokehouses, and the only evi- 
dence they could find against him was the foot-prints 
across the hills that invariably led up to his cabin 
door. Yet they never bothered him. 

It was getting well along toward spring. There 

45 



was still a little snow in the deep hollows, the re- 
mains of the last heavy storm. Kin Harkles had 
been out hunting and looking after some traps he 
had set down along the little creek bottom. He was 
walking along a path that led through an extremely 
dense thicket of undergrowth. As he rounded a 
sharp turn in the path, he was greatly surprised to 
find himself staring into the steel barrel of a rifle 
and listening to the uncheerful words, "Hands Up." 
He complied and without ceremony. There were 
two men in the party that held Harkles captive. 

"Take that rope and tie his hands behind him," 
said the man with the gun, "and then blindfold him." 

It did not take the man long to bind their pris- 
oner securely. All during these proceedings, Har- 
kles was wondering what sort of a predicament he 
was getting into. He was certain they were no 
highwaymen in that part of the country, and he 
really was at a loss to know what it all meant. He 
was hopeful that he would soon find out. 

"D'you live 'round here?" spoke a coarse voice. 
Kin answered in a feeble tone that he did. 

"Wal, we ain't goin' to hurt ye, but we jist want 
to find out a few things, and right now ye ain't got 
no business here. A long time ago, the Injuns 
buried a lot of gold 'round here and we've come back 
and found it. Now, if ye'll behave yerself and keep 
yer mouth shet, we'll show ye a sight that'll be 
mighty good fer sore eyes." 

Before starting with their prisoner, they turned 
him around and around. This was done that he 
might lose the direction which they would take in 
order to reach the location of the buried treasure 

46 



that they had spoken about. Presently they told 
him to move on, and he felt the rope pulling him 
forward. There was no excuse for resisting, so he 
meekly and blindly stumbled along. 

The route taken was a circuitous one — up hill, 
down hill, across a small stream, then back again. 
Now they are pulling him across a fallen tree and 
through the bushes on the other side. Kin Harkles 
was trying to figure out how many miles he had 
walked. It seemed an age since they had started. 
If his eyes had been free, the distance traveled 
would only have been a step for him. Presently they 
halted and he heard them talking in subdued tones. 
Something fell heavily to the ground, like the drop- 
ping of a large stone. His mind was working ac- 
tively, but he could not conjecture where he was or 
what the men were doing. He finally felt a pull at 
the rope, and then one of the men said: 

"Come on. Be kerful, now, when ye go down 
these steps." He knew that one of the men was 
ahead of him and the other following close behind. 
Apparently the steps went down into the earth about 
fifteen feet, as nearly as he could guess. He heard 
them preparing a light and he now anticipated a 
journey underground, for he had begun to realize 
that he had been brought into a cave. 

They again started forward, Kin stumbling along 
between his captors, and he could plainly hear the 
massive stone walls echoing their footsteps as they 
went further into the cavern. Suddenly, they stop- 
ped. They removed the blindfold from Harkles' 
eyes. His heart almost leaped into his mouth when 
he discovered he was standing on the yery edge of 

47 



a chasm, whose yawning mouth seemed waiting to 
receive him. Kin Harkles, for the first time in his 
life, was scared. He could feel his long, unkempt hair 
straightening out and making preparations to stand 
on end. A cold, clammy feeling was coming over 
his body and great beads of ice cold sweat trickled 
down across his brow. He was a man who never 
had known what fear was — but for once he admitted 
to himself that he was in a perilous position. A 
little push — a misstep — and his life would be snuffed 
out in an instant. 

"Purty tight place, pardner," chuckled one of 
the men. "Wal, all we got to say is, that you've got 
to act squar' or down ye go into hell. We mean 
right, but we're purty damned sure we ain't goin' 
to make any mistakes when we take a stranger in 
to see somethin' he won't soon fergit, an' when he 
gits out he'll be diggin' around to see if he can 
find it." 

They did not return the blindbold to his eyes, 
but led him further through one of the most won- 
derful caverns he had ever heard of. The dropping 
stalactites glistened as the light from their torch 
struck their jewelled sides. The little party came 
to a narrow entrance of another room. There was 
just sufficient space for one person to squeeze 
through. Here was another chamber about one- 
fourth as large as the one they had just left. When 
they had walked about half way across the room 
they stopped. In front of them was a number of 
boxes, iron bound and made of oak. They were not 
large, yet of sufficient size that with its contents, 

48 



no doubt, would have made a good load for one to 
carry. 

Kin Harkles hastily scanned the pile of boxes. 
He counted nine of them. The man carrying the 
torch gave the lid of one of the boxes a kick and it 
flew open. Out upon the damp ground rolled a hat- 
ful of golden coin — Spanish doubloons of an ancient 
mintage. Another box was torn open and as the 
light from the torch was reflected upon its contents, 
it revealed a great quantity of diamonds and other 
precious stones. Every box was filled to the top 
with these golden treasures. Wealth unbounded to 
these lucky fellows who had been so fortunate as 
to discover the hiding place of this great treasure. 
"Jest to show ye that our hearts is in the right 
place, ye kin have a han'ful," said one of the men, 
as he handed Harkles several of the gold pieces, 
"and,, young feller, we want ye to distinctly under- 
stand that 'tain't no use to go snoopin' 'round after 
ye get out of here tryin' to find this stuff, fer we're 
goin' to take this out of here tonight and leave the 
country." 

They again placed the blindfold over Kin's eyes 
and started back to the surface. They climbed the 
stone steps at the entrance and in a moment Harkles 
heard again the thud of a falling body, which he 
now knew to be a heavy stone. Apparently, they 
were returning by the same circuitous route they 
had taken in coming there. Yet he could not tell. 
However, the journey did not seem near so long as 
when they first made it. They stopped. The same 
operation of turning his body around was again per- 
formed. They removed the ropes that bound his 

49 



hands behind him. Then the blindfold was taken 
from his eyes. 

He heard a noise in the rear among the bushes. 
Rubbing his eyes, he turned about and saw the wav- 
ing bushes. The strangers had disappeared. 



Henry Scott, Bandit 

HVER at the little village of Cave City, the 
latter part of November, 1913, the night 
agent at the L. & N. depot was surprised 
one evening about 11 o'clock by hearing a little noise 
at the ticket window. He turned about to see what 
the trouble was, and found himself staring into the 
muzzle of a 38 revolver, held by a man with a hand- 
kerchief tied over his face. It did not take him long 
to realize the situation, and when the bandit roughly 
said, "Hands up!" Mr. Agent quickly complied, it 
being to the best interest of all parties concerned. 
He was told to hand out all the cash on hand and 
be quick about it. He did as directed and turned 
over $17.00 of the Ellen N's funds to the gentleman 
making the request. 

The agent, however, recognized the man, and 
the next morning Henry B. Scott was arrested for 
the crime and placed in jail at Glasgow. He was 
soon released on bond. A few days later a forged 
check bobbed up, said to have been the handiwork 
of the same Henry B. This time he was placed in 
jail, not to be released on bond, but to await trial 
at the next term of court. 

Henry didn't like the confinement proposition a 

60 



little bit. In fact, he had good reasons for his dis- 
like if all reports were true, for it had leaked out 
that he was an escaped convict, having served the 
short part of a long sentence in the state peniten- 
tiary of Oklahoma, where he had been incarcerated 
for doing a jewelry store robbery in that state. 
Scott had said that he had forged the check to raise 
funds to go back to that state to dig up a cache of 
diamonds and other valuables which he had hid 
away. But, alas, Henry was found out before he 
even had a chance to "Go West, Young Man, Go 
West." 

Henry thought he had hit upon an admirable 
plan to get out of confinement. So one day in the 
latter part of January, he called to the jailer and 
asked for some little favor, and as the jailer opened 
the door to his cell and started to walk in, Scott 
took him by surprise by throwing a handful of pow- 
dered leaf tobacco into the jailer's eyes and yelled 
for him to get out of the way or he would kill him. 
Scott made a hurried getaway, but the jailer, quick- 
ly recovering from his surprise and Scott's tobacco, 
started in hot pursuit and upon getting within range 
of the fleeing prisoner, fired six shots at him from a 
revolver which he carried, but none took effect upon 
the person of the escaping fugitive. 

Up town, in a few moments, the cry of "man 
broke jail" soon brought the people running from all 
directions. They gave chase, but the wily fellow 
managed to elude his pursuers and hid himself away 
in the brush, and finally pursuit was abandoned, at 
least for the time. However, four young men start- 
ed out in an automobile in the direction he was last 

51 



seen going. They had hardly ridden more than a 
mile, when one of the occupants of the machine no- 
ticed a man crossing the road and immediately rec- 
ognized him as Scott. The car was halted, and so 
was the escaping prisoner. At first he denied his 
identity, but he was soon convinced that he was the 
right party and was loaded into the machine and 
brought back to the town and placed in jail. It 
might be well to say that Henry is not the recipient 
of many favors from the injured jailer. 



A Story of the James Boys 



N - 10 doubt you have forgotten the many dar- 
mm ing escapades of the world's most noted des- 

H peradoes and bandits — the James Brothers. 
Few remember their passing through the state of 
Kentucky and the deeds they committed while there. 

At Columbia, in Adair county, which lies in a 
territory untouched by railroads for a distance of 
fifty miles in either direction and located in rather a 
wild part of the state, was made the object of one 
of the raids of the James boys. It was here that 
they robbed the Bank of Adair and killed the cash- 
ier, a man by the name of Garrett, who gave his life 
in trying to protect the property of those who had 
entrusted it to his keeping. They secured quite a 
large sum of money as the result of this operation 
and fled the town amid a hail of bullets from the 
guns of the aroused citizens. They escaped without 
injury and went into concealment until the flurry 

52 



had blown over, and they were soon ready for work 
in other territory. 

Before they robbed the bank at Columbia the 
James boys passed through Glasgow, and it is said 
that their intentions were to make a raid upon one 
of the banks here. The fact that there were a good- 
ly number of people on the streets at the time they 
were here no doubt kept them from making the at- 
tempt. In a few days after they did the robbery at 
Columbia, they again came back to Glasgow and 
rode around the public square, but were again 
thwarted from doing the deed, for as they rode up 
to one of the banks on the north side of the public 
square, a man with a rifle, who had been out on a 
hunting expedition, was sitting in front of the bank 
building telling some friends of the experience he 
had had that day, and possibly his armed appear- 
ance stopped them from making the attempt. This 
was the last time they were ever seen in Glasgow. 

It is further told that a member of their gang 
came back to Barren county and made this section 
his home, and was a successful school teacher for 
several years. 

It was some time afterward that these bandits 
held up and robbed a stage coach between Cave City 
and Mammoth Cave. In those days the only means 
of reaching Mammoth Cave from the L. & N. rail- 
road was by means of the numerous stage coaches, 
all of the Concord type and pulled by six mules. The 
James boys must have imagined that the picking 
would be pretty good here, on account of the many 
wealthy tourists who visited Mammoth Cave. On 
the occasion when they held up the stage coach it 

53 



was filled to overflowing with just such a crowd. 
The coach was halted and the passengers were lined 
up at the point of numerous revolvers and told to 
disgorge their belongings into a sack which one of 
the men carried. One passenger, a man by the name 
of Roundtree, was robbed of a fine gold watch. A 
few years later when Jesse James met his death 
at the hands of Robert Ford, the watch which had 
been the property of Roundtree was found in Jesse's 
possession. A few days after the hold-up a man by 
the name of Hunt, a local resident, was arrested 
and tried for doing the robbery, but there was not 
enough evidence to convict him, so he was acquitted. 



The Making of "Moonshine" 

f T£ 1 ENTUCKY has always been famous for the 
I JlV quality of the liquor made there. Underly- 

[fgj|g ing the soil of that state are vast beds of 
limestone, and the veins of clear, cold water gurgling 
out from the hillsides is purity itself. The limestone 
water is essential in adding quality to the liquor 
distilled. It gives it a taste that is different, and 
the "Bourbon of Kentucky" is a quality brand known 
the wide world round. 

Whiskey has not always been made in Kentucky 
in a legal way — that way in which Uncle Sam would 
receive his required revenue tax. Oftimes the na- 
tive, in his mountain home, would establish a still 
and from this, along with a little farming, would 
manage to exist year in and year out. These stills 
were usually located in some out-of-the-way nook, 

54 



there being a purpose in this, that it might be a 
difficult task for the revenue men to find it when 
they came around looking for illicit stills. 

Many are the interesting stories told of those 
who conducted a business of this nature. In the 
early days, the making of "moonshine" was the com- 
mon means of livelihood for many of the backwoods- 
men. But the tireless campaign carried on against 
it by the government has practically wiped it out of 
existence. Occasionally, however, some man liivng 
back in the knobs is arrested, in these later days, 
his still smashed to smithereens, and he is taken to 
the Federal Court and sentenced to a term in the 
U. S. penitentiary. 

One man, who for many years evaded the vigil- 
ance of the revenue officers and continued to make 
"moonshine," had a most formidable place to carry 
on his stilling. He had dug a cellar under his log 
house and connected the smoke stack of his still 
with the clay and stick chimney running up on one 
side of the house. His output was not large, but 
he kept at it almost every day and made quite a 
nice sum of money out of the business. This man 
is still living in Barren county and is now considered 
one of the best tobacco farmers in that section of 
the country. From the profits of his illicit stilling 
he bought a good farm. They could never get suf- 
ficient evidence that he was making whiskey illeg- 
ally, while it was known that he did it, for he kept 
his tracks well covered. 



55 



One Kentucky Railroad 

LASGOW is situated ten miles east of the 
Louisville & Nashville railroad. For years 
and years there were no means of transpor- 
tation between this railroad and the town, except 
by wagons for hauling freight and stage coaches to 
carry passengers. The town was isolated so far as 
railroad transportation was concerned. Foreign 
capital would not look in their direction to establish 
a means of transportation, and it did seem to be a 
great drawback to the town ten miles in the hills 
from the nearest railroad. 

It was a splendid trading point, being a county 
seat as well, the people driving overland from the 
northern, eastern and southern counties, bringing 
their tobacco, corn, lumber, hogs, cattle and mules 
to this market, and exchanging them for the things 
they needed at home. These trips were few and far 
between and were only made wren necessity de- 
manded. 

Along about 1868 a line of railroad from Glasgow 
to the main line of the L. & N. was talked about. 
It was agitated, people became interested in the 
project, but how to build it was the question. Fin- 
ally, an election was held in the township in which 
Glasgow was situated and the proposed road was to 
run, and was carired by a goodly majority, and this 
was the beginning of the Glasgow Branch Railroad. 
In 1869 the township raised the required amount of 
money and built ten miles of the road from Glasgow 
to what is now knows as Glasgow Junction on the 
L. & N. railroad. 

56 



It was a sort of makeshift for a railroad, but was 
better than none at all. As a paying proposition, it 
was a failure. Finally a company of local capitalists 
was organized and incorporated and they purchased 
the road from the township, paying $54,000 for the 
property. New blood being infused into the propo- 
sition, it developed into a splendid paying invest- 
ment, yet the equipment was of the most common 
kind, and there is still plenty of room for improve- 
ment. 

Today the property is estimated to be worth a 
half million dollars. Their single train makes three 
round trips daily from Glasgow to Glasgow Junc- 
tion, and if you care to take passage from one end 
of the line to the other it will cost you exactly one 
dollar — a rate of five cents per mile. The company 
claims the right to make this charge on account of 
a state law which gives railroads under certain 
lengths the right to charge such a rate. 

In a way the railroad is a menace to the growth 
of Glasgow, a thriving little city of six thousand 
population and a splendid location for factories and 
other industries. It is now one of the best tobacco 
markets in Kentucky and has two mammoth ware- 
houses with a business running into the thousands 
of dollars. Besides these is one large tobacco fac- 
tory and several wholesale houses that do a flourish- 
ing business, and if ample transportation and reas- 
onable freight rates could be established, it would 
soon bloom out into the best business town in 
Southern Kentucky. 



57 



Kentucky's Writers of Fiction 



TT^ENTUCKY may not be a forward state in an 
J\ educational way, but it must be admitted 
that she has produced some of the most able 
writers of fiction that we have today. Charles Ne- 
ville Buck is a native of Kentucky. He is the author 
of that beautiful story— "The Gall of the Cumber- 
land." It is a masterpiece in literature. In it we 
have an extremely realistic story of the Kentucky 
mountain people. The dominating characters are 
two young and ambitious natives — Samson South 
and Sally Miller — whose struggles for betterment, 
combined with the typical mountain feud, make very 
interesting reading. 

Down in Allen county they claim the home of 
Ofcie Read, one of the country's most versatile writ- 
ers of stories of life in the South. The characters 
in his narratives are always drawn from life — people 
that he knew, and with his wonderful art of produc- 
ing pen pictures of these natives, makes his work 
more than brilliant. 

By special permission of the publishers and Mr. 
Read, we are reproducing one of his typical Ken- 
tucky stories, and we trust you will find the same 
pleasure in reading it that we had when it first at- 

68 



tracted our attention some time ago. The title of 
this little masterpiece is 

"OLD BILLY." 

Rain came in dashes. It was like the angry spit- 
ting of a cornered cat. The landscape was dreary; 
the farmhouses seemed as blotches of wretchedness 
— the train roared toward Chicago. There were not 
many passnegers. Some of them were nodding, 
others sat in gloomy resignation, but there were 
three men who were inclined to be prankish. These 
three men, Brooks, Adams, and Cooper, were actual- 
ly laughing, at one of the oldest of jokes, doubtless, 
and a gaunt old fellow, wise enough to be miserable, 
was frowning on them in sour disapproval when the 
train stopped at a station. A woman, with a bundle 
almost as large as a feather bed, bumped her way 
off, and a comical-looking old fellow nodded and 
"ducked" his way on. What a peculiar old fellow 
he did appear to be, with his squinting eyes set so 
close together and his hook-nose shaped so much like 
a scythe. His type is not found in old countries — 
quiet self-assurance in homespun clothes exists only 
in America. 

"What have we picked up now?" said Brooks. 

"The governor of the state, perhaps," Adams 
answered, and then added: "Cooper, go and ask 
that old fellow to explain himself." 

"Well, I don't know that he owes me an explana- 
tion," Cooper replied, "but if you say so I'll go and 
tell him that you want to see him." 

59 



"All right, go and tell him to come down here 
and make himself sociable." 

Cooper told the old fellow that he was wanted, 
and he good-humoredly came back and joined the 
friends. 

"You looked lonesome up there," said Brooks, 
"and we didn't know but you might be willing to 
enter into a sort of reciprocity with us." 

"Much obleeged," the old fellow replied, squint- 
ing comically. 

"Where are you from?" Adams asked. 

"Wall," he answered, pulling at his thin, streaky 
beard, "my home is down yan in Kaintucky, sah. 
Come up here in Indiany to see my married daugh- 
ter that lives back yander a piece. Hearn her hus- 
band wa'n't treatin' her very well and I 'lowed, I 
did, that I'd come up and maul him a while. I trans- 
acted my business with him and I rechon it's all 
right now." 

"What's your name?" 

"Old Billy." 

"Which way are you going now?" Cooper asked. 

"Thiser way," he answered, pointing forward. 

"Yes, so I see." 

"Glad of it, sah. I'm always glad to l'arn that a 
person ain't blind. I 'lowed I'd go up here to Chi- 
cago and see how all them rascals are gittin' along. 
Rascals tickles me might'ly." 

"There isn't fun enough in this," Brooks adroit- 
ly whispered, and then said aloud : "Well, Old Billy, 
you say you live in Kentucky?" 

"Yes, sah, in Allen county." 

60 



"Well, then, tell us a story. I have heard that 
Allen county is full of yarns." 

"I don't know any story. You don't know Ab 
Starbuck, do you?" 

"No; but what about him?" 

"Nothin', only he was about the toughest man 
in Kaintucky. And mean! Thar wa'n't nuthin' too 
mean for him to do. One night, over on Big Sandy, 
he rid into a meetin' house durin' a revival and shot 
out the lights and left the mourners thar in the 
dark. Oh, he was bad, and when he got on the ram- 
page fc?ks had to git out of his way. When he come 
to town business jest nachully suspended. I never 
shall furgit one day when he come to Scottville. A 
good many of the merchants closed their doors when 
they hearn that he had come, and men were pretty 
scarce on the street, I tell you. Wall, Ab he come 
a-stalkin' along the sidewalk with a couple of pistols 
in his belt, and a bowie-knife in his bootleg. Old 
men got out of his way, and little children got off 
the sidewalk down in the mud to let him pass. Wall, 
jest about the time he was the worst lookin' — jest 
atter he had kicked a dog out into the street, here 
come an old nigger man, walkin' along, meetin' him. 
The nigger didn't git out of the way — he walked 
right into Ab Starbuck — bumped against him. Ab 
jumped back. He was too much astonished to think 
about his bowie-knife, and he hauled off with his 
monstrous fist and hit the nigger in the mouth. The 
old man staggered. He wiped his bloody lips with 
one hand, and began to feel about at arm's length 
in front of him with the other; and then, in a voice 
as gentle as a child's, he said : 

61 



" 'Boss, you must skuze me, sah ; I'se blind.' 
"'My God, old man; I din't know that!' Ab 
cried, and then stood with his hand restin' on the 
nigger's shoulder. 'Old man,' he said, 'I wouldn't 
hurt you for the world,' and he took out his hand- 
kerchief and wiped the nigger's lips. 'Old man/ he 
went on, 'that hat you've got on ain't fit to wear. 
Come in here,' and he led him into a store that hap- 
pened not to be closed up on account of the des- 
perado. 'Here,' he called, and the storekeeper be- 
gan to dance around, 'give this old man the best hat 
you've got in the house. W'y, your shoes are all 
worn out, too. We'll jest get a new pair, that's what 
we'll do. And you need a coat, too. Oh, we can't 
afford to go around lookin' shabby. We don't care 
what it costs. Here, young fellow, hustle around. 
Hand us a coat.' He stood lookin' on with tender 
eyes. When the nigger was rigged out, Ab asked: 
" 'Whar was you headed for, old gentleman — and 
God knows you are a gentleman, I don't care how 
black you are.' 

" 'I was goin' down to the wagin yard, sah.' 
" 'Wal, it's too muddy to walk down thar with 
them new shoes on, so I'll jest send you down thar 
in a hack. Here, Mister, make out your bill;' and 
when he had paid what was due the store he put the 
old man in a hack and sent him away." 

The three friends looked at one another, but 
said nothing. The train stopped at a station, and a 
tired-looking woman, carrying a little girl in her 
arms, got on. She took a seat just opposite the 
three friends and Old Billy. The little girl began to 
cry. Brooks bought her an orange, but she would 

62 



not take it. Adams offered her an apple, but she 
screamed at him. 

"Oh, I don't know what to do with her," said the 
woman, sighing. "I don't know what is the matter 
with her. 

Old Billy looked at the woman and then at the 
child. "Your child, madam?" he asked. 

"Yes, sir." 

"Your only child, I reckon." 

"Yes, sir." 

"The only one you've ever had, I take it." 

"Well, yes, sir," she answered, regarding him 
curiously. 

"And you were an only child, too, I reckon." 

"I was, sir." 

"And you didn't play with children much." 

"No, sir." 

"I thought not." 

The old man got up, took a little shawl that had 
been thrown on a seat, twisted it, tied a knot at one 
end, smoothed the thing into the semblance of a rag 
doll, handed it to the little girl and said : "Love the 
doll." The little creature seized the rag and hugged 
it. She ceased crying in a moment, and in a sweet 
disregard of what was going on about her, hummed 
the improvised tune of tenderness. 

"Madam," said the old man, "your little girl 
simply wanted somethin' to love and protect." 

"Gentlemen," Brooks remarked, arising, "the 
man who can thus touch the earliest bud of woman's 
noble nature — the very germ of the truest of all af- 
fections, motherly love, is my master. He is not 
Old Billy, but, gentlemen, he is the Hon. William," 



The Oil Industry in Kentucky 

ETROLEUM was discovered near Glasgow as 
early as 1865, and there is one well in that 
vicinity that has flowed continuously since 
that time, and is now producing at the rate of five 
barrels a day. It is doubtful if there is another well 
in the United States that has made such a record 
as this one. 

The land area on which oil is taken in this local- 
ity is not large, yet covers several hundred acres. 
The vein is reached at a depth of about five hundred 
feet, and there are many paying wells in the district. 

As an oil producing state, Kentucky is fast grow- 
ing in importance. This is indicated by a report 
just issued by the Geological Survey. During the 
year of 1913, the production of petroleum in Ken- 
tucky was 500,000 barrels, 15,632 more than was 
produced in the state in 1912. If this percentage of 
increase is continued, and we have no doubt but that 
it will, Kentucky will climb steadily toward the top 
of the list of important oil-producing states. The 
possibilities of finding oil in Western Kentucky has 
aroused much general interest, and the Geological 
Survey is receiving many letters daily from inter- 
ested persons in that territory regarding the prac- 
ticability of opening up new wells. 



^z^z 




S4 



c 



Recalling the Drought of 1856 
APTAIN C. W. THOMPSON, of Sulphur 
Wells, Kentucky, a pleasant gentleman and 
and interesting conversationalist, tells of the 
iislstrous drought that occurred in 1856. The 
drought of 1913 was not a marker as compared 
with the one which occurred in '56. At that time 
he was a small boy of ten years and remembers 
the occurrence with great vividness. The predic- 
tions of starvation on every hand made a great 
impression upon his mind. His father was a 
farmer, and a good one for that day. He had 
planted about 125 acres in corn, which was his 
average planting. The land was fresh and very fer- 
tile, much of it being creek bottoms. The crop was 
well cultivated and when harvesting time came in 
the fall, they gathered only about one hundred bar- 
rels, less than one barrel to the acre. It was esti- 
mated that the corn crop that year, in that section, 
did not reach more than fifteen per cent of an aver- 
age crop. 

In that year there lived in Green county a man 
of great wealth, by the name of David Edwards. He 
was the owner of much land and stock, and had 
many slaves. In the Brownsburg section of Green 
county, ten miles from Mr. Edwards' home, were 
great tracts of white oak timber that bore a heavy 
crop of acorns. In the fall of the year Mr. Edwards 
rigged up several wagons and sent them with a 
troop of negroes to the Brownsburg section to 
gather acorns, of which the ground for miles around 
was covered. They gathered and hauled home sev- 

65 



eral hundred bushels of these nuts, with which Mr. 
Edwards fattened hogs to make meat to feed his 
family and slaves. The incident shows the dire dis- 
tress caused by the drought of 1856, as well as the 
thriftiness of Mr. Edwards. If we were inclined 
to speculate, we might conclude that this spirit of 
thriftiness might, in a measure, account for Mr. 
Edwards having been the wealthiest man in that 
section. 

It was an unusually hard winter on stock, and 
many died from starvation. Some of the farmers 
managed in some manner to pull their small herds 
through, but they were in a sorry plight when spring 
time came the next year and grass began to grow. 

Mr. Thompson's father owned fifty head of cat- 
tle of fairly good quality and in February, when the 
feed was about exhausted, he would send his men 
to fell elm trees which grew in profusion along the 
creek bottoms. The cattle were driven to their elm 
feed in the mornings, watched through the day and 
driven home at night to be given a scant feed of 
straw or shucks, and again the next morning to the 
elm boughs, which they would eat with great relish, 
not only eating the lighter limbs, but the twigs as 
large as a man's finger. This was continued each 
day until the grass started to grow in the spring. 
He considered it great sport to mount a horse and 
help drive the herd to the brush in the morning and 
back at night. 

The next spring there was no corn to feed to the 
work stock. There was scarcely enough for bread 
for the people. However, the season of 1857 was 
a fine one. Things appeared to give reason that the 

66 



year would be a favorable one for the farmer. But 
in the spring when it came time to start to plowing 
their horses were in no condition to work, from the 
fact that they had been on scant rations throughout 
the long, hard winter. Horses were plowed two or 
three hours while another horse grazed in the near- 
by pasture, the teams being changed four or five 
times a day. 

That year the crop was an abundant one and by 
gathering time the people had forgotten their dis- 
tress of the year before. In the summer of '57, corn 
sold for $7.50 per barrel, all used for bread. The 
L. & N. railroad at that time had not been built, 
and the people had to depend strictly upon a home 
market for their grain, as none could be shipped in. 

There was much talk of mob violence in the 
summer of 1857, the plan being to take corn by force 
from those who had it and would not divide it with 
those who had none. However, these threats were 
not put into execution. 

About this same time an incident occurred that 
was not quite so gloomy as the story of the drought 
related above. Henry Toby was a merchant at 
Cloverdale, two miles from Sulphur Wells, and, as 
did nearly all the country merchants in those days, 
he sold liquor by the quart, the price being "two- 
bits," or a coon skin would buy a quart at Mr. Toby's 
store, the same as cash. 

Ancel Goodman, who lived in that section, was 
very fond of liquor and patronized Toby's place ex- 
tensively. Toby's storing place for furs was the 
loft above his store room, with the gable end out. 
One day Goodman appeared with a coon skin and 

67 



got his quart. Toby told him to go back and throw 
the skin up in the loft, which Goodman pretended 
to do. Instead of doing as directed he concealed the 
skin for future use, appearing each day or so with 
the same skin, going through the same performance, 
until he had secured about forty or fifty quarts of 
Toby's whiskey, and all from one coon skin. 

After a time, a fur buyer came along and bought 
the lot, estimated by Toby at about fifty skins; but 
imagine his surprise when it turned out that there 
was but one skin in his loft instead of fifty, as he 
thought, and that one was a hide he had purchased 
from another man. 

Goodman loved whiskey and was never known 
to turn down a game of poker or seven-up, but he 
had many redeeming qualities, among which was 
that he was an industrious man. He was engaged 
for a time upon a large farm that employed many 
slaves. His employer made him overseer and told 
him to always get the men up by four o'clock in the 
morning so that they might get out in time to do a 
full day's work. Goodman would arouse everybody 
on the place as early as one o'clock in the morning, 
and could not be kept still later than two a.m. When 
his term of three months had expired he wanted to 
remain longer, but the man refused to have him 
in his employ, because he would arose every 
negro on the place hours before daylight, and no 
one could sleep when once he got started. We dare 
say Goodman was the only man ever discharged for 
getting his men up too early. 



fiS 




In the Shadow of Mount Lucky 



A Story of the Pine Mountains 




RACK! A rifle ball cut the leaves from 
an overhanging limb just above Steve 
Dan-ell's head. He was just about to 
enter a deep ravine along the side of 
old Mount Lucky, when he was halted 
by the swish of a bullet that was fired 
by some unknown person lying in am- 
bush. He paused and coolly looked about to see 
from whence had come this leaden missile. About 
a hundred paces to his left he noticed the tall 
bushes move and suddenly there appeared a girl, 
armed with a Winchester repeater. 

The revenue officials in Louisville had learned 
that moonshine whiskey was being made down in 
the Pine Mountain country in Harlan county. There 
. is not much tillable land in this section and the 
native mountaineers must resort to something to 
make a living. Illicit distilling is carried on but 
not so extensively as in former years, yet it forms 
the basis of a livelihood for many a man in this 
isolated country, as not a single railroad penetrates 
its borders. 

69 



Steve Darrel was known to his associates as a 
man who never flinched his duty. This quality had 
made him one of the best officers ever sent out from 
the Louisville headquarters. Col. Martin had called 
him into his private office, one afternoon in July, 
and told him of the information he had received 
from reliable sources in Harlan county, and that he 
had decided to send Steve down there to investigate 
the matter, and, if possible, to bring these illicit 
distillers back with him to Louisville. This was not 
the first time these reports had come to Col. Martin. 
He had already sent several of his best men down 
there. Some of them came back. Two of them had 
never returned. They had met their fate at the 
hands of these mountain distillers, who did not 
hesitate to protect their illicit calling, even should 
they be required to do so at the hazard of their 
own lives. 

After a lengthy consultation, Darrell left the 
revenue office and went to his rooms to prepare him- 
self for the journey before him. If you had met 
him going down Broadway toward the Union Depot, 
you would not have recognized in him the fearless 
revenue officer. Apparently he was a mountaineer 
of the most pronounced type. 

He ended his railroad journey at Barboursville. 
From here he knew he would have to take his foot 
in his hand and cut across the country to a point 
near Whitesburg. From the best information that 
had been obtained, those who were boldest in this 
illicit whiskey making lived in the Lizeville country, 
which lies in the very depths of the wildest part of 
the Pine Mountains. 

7Q 



Darrell was in no particular hurry to get to his 
destination, for he wanted to thoroughly familiarize 
himself, not only with the ways of the people in that 
section, but to apparently become one of them. Over 
six weeks had elapsed since he had left Louisville, 
and at the opening of our story, he was climbing 
the rough and rugged sides of old Mount Lucky, 
when his voyage of discovery was halted by a leaden 
messenger, fired from some unknown source. 

"Mistah, what yo'all want?" greeted him as he 
looked up at the girl above him. "If yo'all is a 
revnoo, yer had bettah back track." 

It was plain that she meant what she said, for 
she was pointing the gun directly at him. Darrell 
hardly knew how to answer his inquisitor, neither 
could he account for the reason why he should re- 
semble a revenue officer. He had taken every pos- 
sible precaution to leave behind all marks of civili- 
zation when he had departed from Louisville. 

"Kin yo'all tell me how to git to Lish Dorsey's 
place?" Darrell asked. 

"Come up heah an' let me look at yen— an' hoi' 
yah han's up, too, fer I'll shoot if yah don't watch," 
was the pertinent answer Steve received to his in- 
quiry, and he thought it best to accede to the de- 
mand, and so he started up the mountain-side to 
where the determined girl was standing. 

"Ain't yah a revnoo," she again queried, "hon- 
est*" 

"Now, look heah, little gal, what makes yo all 

think I'se a revnoo? Naw, I'se not a revnoo. I'se 
a cousin to Lish Dorsey's fust wife an' I kirn from 

71 



Claibohn county, Tennessee, whah she wuz bohn 
an' raised." 

As he drew near to his captor, he recognized in 
the eyes of the girl something that told him that 
she was not joking when she said she would shoot. 

She was a comely miss, possibly eighteen years 
old. Her long, jet black hair hung straight almost 
to her waist, and her tanned face was really fair to 
look upon. Her dress, made from cheap, dark 
calico, hung loosely about her body. This was the 
person Steve Darrell had to face. 

"What's yo' name?" she asked, when Steve had 
stopped within a few feet from where she stood. 

"My name? Why, my name's Rollins — Marsh 
Rollins. What's yo's?" 

"Don't know's that's any of yo' business. Keep 
yo' han's up, I tell yo'. It's my 'pinion yo' had bet- 
tah be goin' back to Tennessee an' in a hurry, fer 
I'se got my 'spicion that you'se a revnoo." 

Steve had reached a point where he fully be- 
lieved every word the girl spoke. For the first time 
in many a day he realized that he was beaten, and 
by a woman, too. He was thinking and thinking 
hard and fast. He must outwit this sturdy moun- 
tain girl. Suddenly he jumped to her right and, 
pointing down to the ground, yelled: 

"Snake!" 

The girl for an instant lowered the rifle and 
turned her eyes toward the ground to see if what 
Darrell said was true. In a moment, a quick leap 
placed him in front of the girl and he grabbed the 
lowered rifle and wrenched it from her hands. The 

72 



look of dismay on the girl's face was really startling. 
She had been outwitted. 

"So yah think I'se a revnoo, do yah, little mis- 
sey? Well, you'se mistaken. Fse simply yo' friend 
— doin' yah a good tuhn by takin' this rifle frum yo' 
han's. Whah do yo'all live?" 

During this time, Steve had ejected the cart- 
ridges from the magazine of the rifle, and after 
picking them up from the ground, placed them in 
the side pocket of his old coat. He then passed the 
rifle back to the girl. 

"Think you'se mighty smaht, don't yah?" she 
said, as she dropped the butt of the empty rifle on 
the ground at her feet. "Daddy'll make yo'all pay 
mighty foh this. Don't know my daddy, do yah?" 

"What's yo' daddy's name?" 

" 'Lige Hinson, an' when I tell him what yo'all 
done thah's no tellin' what he'll do to yo'all, Mistah 
Rollins frum Claibohn county." 

"Say, now," said Steve, trying his utmost to get 
in the good graces of the girl, "won't yo'all tell me 
what yo' name is? I begs yo' pahdon, if yo'all 
thinks I didn't treat yah right." 

"My name? W'y, it's — it's Mira — Mira Hinson, 
an' Lige Hinson is my fathaw." 

Steve could see that former traces of aggressive- 
ness were leaving his newly found acquaintance and 
he now hoped and trusted that he might be able to 
get needed information from her, as Lige Hinson, 
her father, was the very man he was after. He well 
knew that he dare not allow the least trace of sus- 
picion arise in the girl's mind that he was other 
than what he had told her. 

73 



Lige Hinson was the most notorious maker of 
moonshine whiskey in the Cumberland Mountains. 
Time and time again the revenue authorities had 
tried to locate his still house or capture him while 
in the act of making moonshine whiskey, but their 
efforts had availed them nothing. He was as wily as 
a fox and kept his secret well hidden. His cabin 
home was located in the depths of Mount Lucky 
and not far from a stream that seemed to exist in 
a succession of accidental tumblings. The only oc- 
cupants of the Hinson home were the old man and 
his daughter, Mira, her mother having died when 
Mira was a little girl three years old. The latter 
well knew the secret location of her father's still 
house, and she, also, was as close about it as a clam. 

When Steve Darrell found himeslf so near the 
goal of his journey he well knew that he must keep 
his secret well guarded. It was up to him, now that 
he was facing the daughter of the man for whom he 
was searching, and he must bring to bear everything 
that would make him an occupant of the Hinson 
home. 

"Yah didn't tell me how fah 'twas to the Dorsey 
place," said Darrell. 

"Dorsey place? I f ergot all 'bout what you'se 
askin' me," she replied. "W'y, my goodness, it must 
be nigh on twenty miles to Dorsey's, ovah on Big 
Buck crick, jist this side of Hank Jackson's, an' 
you'd nevah get thah tonight." 

"S'pose yo' daddy 'd object to keepin' a furriner? 
'Cause I hain't in no hurry to git ovah thah, an' I 
don't cah if it takes me a week to make the trip." 

"Wei," cautiously replied the girl, "I don't know 



'zactly what daddy'll say, but I specs he won't turn 
yo'all outen. So if yo'all go 'long with me, I'll ast 
him." 

They started up the mountain side and soon 
came to a path through the undergrowth. A rooster 
crow told Darrell that they were nearing a house, 
and in a few moments the cabin of the Hinsons 
could be seen in the distance, setting in a little cove 
in the mountain. A long, lank hound came baying 
at them, but Mira soon silenced him with a gentle 
reprimand and a pat of assurance on the head. 

Just as they were entering the gateway, the 
huge form of a man loomed up in the doorway of 
the cabin. He was tall and robust, a heavy, grizzled 
beard covering his face. There was a look on his 
countenance that Steve Darrell knew meant business 
in all the word implied. This was not a time for 
trifles. He would soon know his fate. 

"Oh, daddy, heah's a strangah — Mistah Rollins, 
— he's a secon' cousin to Lish Dorsey's fust wife, 
an' he's from Claibohn county, Tennessee. Kin we 
keep him ovah night, he want's to know?" 

"What's yo' business in these parts, strangah?" 
asked the old man. 

"Well, sah," coolly replied Steve, "I'se been 
workin' fer Hen Sandahs down to Barboursville, an' 
we got through with his cohn, an' I took a notion I'd 
like to visit the Dorseys while I'se up in this country, 
as they is relations an' I'd nevah seen 'em. So I 
stahted out to walk thah an' I got this fah on my 
journey, an' I'se certain mighty 'bliged to yo', mis- 
tah, if yo' could put me up ovah night, sah. I met 
yo' gal down thah by the crick an' she ast me up." 

75 



The old man's eyes seemed glued on Steve Dar- 
rell. He was looking to see if there was evidence in 
his countenance that he was not what he was pre- 
tending. Steve knew he was in the witness box and 
steeled himself to make the best of the situation. 
The frankness with which he appealed to Lige Hin- 
son was in his favor, as he saw at a glance. He had 
made a favorable impression. 

"Tell yo', strangah, we don't often take anybody 
into ouh house that we don't know, but yo'all seem 
to be tellin' it to me faih, an* I 'low yo' kin come in 
an* welcome," was the verdict rendered by old Lige 
in Darrell's case. 

When her father had given the permission that 
would cause Darrell to remain over night in their 
cabin, a welcoming smile flitted across Mira's face. 
Something in the stranger had attracted her the 
same as it had her father. 

In a few moments the crackling of a blaze in the 
open fireplace told Darrell that Mira was busy pre- 
paring the evening meal. This was welcome news to 
him, for he had had nothing to eat since early morn- 
ing. He and the old man were sitting out in the 
dooryard, discussing things in general and nothing 
in particular. However, they were seemingly get- 
ting better acquainted. In the course of a half hour, 
Mira came to the door and announced: 

"Yo'all kin have a bite." 

"Come on in," said the old man, leading the way 
into the cabin. They seated themselves at the table 
and were soon enjoying the well-cooked victuals, 
appetizingly served in primitive back-woods style. 

"Wisht I could fin' somethin' to do up heah," said 

76 



Darrell, filling his pipe for an after-supper smoke, 
" 'cause I kinder like the neighborhood." 

"Wal," spoke the old man, hesitatingly, "than 
hain't much to do in this heah rough country." Ap- 
parently Darrell was not receiving much encourage- 
ment towards his willingness to remain in that sec- 
tion. 

Bed time came and he was shown to a spare bed 
in an adjoining room. When he closed his door, he 
went towards the bed and prepared to disrobe. He 
blew out the candle, but instead of getting into the 
bed, he gently crept in the direction of the door, 
there to listen to any remarks that would be made 
concerning him. 

He heard a whispered consultation and could only 
occasionally catch a word. He was the subject, of 
course, and, strange to relate, the girl who late that 
afternoon had fired a bullet at him was now praising 
him to her father. The old man seemed to be the 
least bit skeptical about the matter, but Darrell sud- 
denly realized that he had won a friend in Mira. 

II 

A rap at his door early next morning told him 
that breakfast was waiting. When he came out the 
only person in sight was Mira. Her father had 
vanished. Steve asked the girl as to the where- 
abouts of her father, and she informed him that he 
had gone across the mountain with a sack of corn 
which he would exchange for meal at Seth Daniels' 
water mill, and that he would not return home until 
late in the evening, as it was an all-day ride across 
the mountain. 

77 



Was this a test for Steve Darrell? 

Mira busied herself about the home with her 
usual morning work. Darrell made a little tour of 
inspection about the place, but did not get very far 
away from the cabin. He and Mira had several 
little chats together that only served to get them 
better acquainted. He was coming along famously. 
Would he obtain the object of his quest? 

Noontime came and he and Mira enjoyed their 
simple meal alone. Filling his pipe after dinner, he 
decided to make a search to see if he could locate 
the Hinson still house. Starting westward along a 
little path, he wended his way down the mountain- 
side for some distance. Stopping, he looked about 
to see if it were possible that he was being followed, 
or that anyone was in sight, but he discovered noth- 
ing. He changed his direction and started over a 
little ridge densely covered with heavy underbrush. 
He wormed his way across the "hog-back" until he 
struck an open place, and here he found a slight re- 
semblance to a path, which would have lead him 
down to the stream at the foot of the mountain. 
He followed this for a few moments, when he came 
to what appeared to be a cross path. Debating with 
himself as to which course to take, he chanced the 
one that turned to his left. This led him to the en- 
trance of the ravine where he had encountered Mira 
Hinson the afternoon before. His suspicion told him 
that he was on the right road that would lead him 
to the still house. Keeping up the ravine, he pur- 
sued his journey for at least a quarter of a mile, 
and he seemed to be going right into old Mount 
Lucky. The rough walls of the ravine towered above 

78 



his head. A sharp turn in the pathway brought him 
directly in front of what he first thought was an 
impenetrable wall, but he soon discovered that he 
could easily pass around the large stone obstruction. 
He came through safely on the other side and the 
view that suddenly opened up before his eyes was 
startling in its grandeur. Here was situated a cove 
in the mountains that was possibly a hundred feet 
or more in diameter. The rugged walls were almost 
straight up and down and of solid stone. A fringe 
of cedars and pines lined the crest of the cove. A 
silver stream of sparkling water came rippling out 
of a fissure in the rocks. Green mosses and ferns 
clinging to the rocky sides added to the picturesque- 
ness of the sublime scene. With all this bewildering 
natural beauty, nothing attracted DarrelPs attention 
more than the little rack-shamble log hut that stood 
immediately in the center of the cove. He ran to- 
ward it and, quickly pushing open the door, looked 
inside. The sight that met his eyes almost took 
away his breath. He had found Lige Hinson's still 
house. 

Steve Darrell knew that he was treading on the 
crater of a volcano if it be known that he had pene- 
trated the old man's secret. He must not be found 
here, so he hastily retraced his steps and was soon 
back at the little cross path that he had left less 
than an hour before, and in a short time came to 
the premises of his backwoods host. 

When he entered the cabin he found no trace of 
Mira. Had she followed him ? He looked about the 
place, but failed to discover her presence. Going to 
the door, he glanced about in all directions, but 

70 



nothing availed his search. Walking down the path- 
way to the gate, he stopped suddenly. In the dis- 
tance he could hear the shrill treble of a woman's 
voice : 

"Just as I am, without one plea, 
But that Thy blood was shed for me, 
And that Thou bid'st me come to Thee, 
O Lamb of God! I come." 

He thought he could trace a slight resemblance 
in the tones to Mira's voice, but he was not certain. 
The singer was drawing nearer. It was Mira, a bas- 
ket swinging on her arm, returning from a neigh- 
bor's, where she had gone on an errand. The mo- 
ment she saw Darrell, the song was hushed and he 
could see the color rise to her browned cheeks. As 
she came near her cabin home, Darrell half started 
to meet her. This wild mountain rose had presented 
herself to him in a new light — a vision of loveliness. 
When near him she stopped. Almost unconsciously, 
Darrell reached his hand toward her, and shyly draw- 
ing closer, her disengaged left hand met his. Her 
eyes dropped and a sweet smile gently crossed her 
face. Steve suddenly realized that he had captured 
a Hinson — for Mira loved him. 

Arm in arm they walked to the house, but neith- 
er of them spoke. Reaching the door of the cabin, 
Darrell gently assisted her to its threshold. Step- 
ping inside, she set the basket down near the fire- 
place and returned to the door, outside of which 
Steve was seated on a puncheon bench. Dropping 
down into the doorway, Mira looked at him inquir- 
ingly. 

"What yo'all been doin' with yo'self this after- 
noon?" she asked. 

80 



Darrell started. Why did she want to know what 
he had been doing? Could there he the least atom 
of suspicion in her mind that he might have tried 
to investigate the secret of Lige Hinson? 

"Do yo' know," he replied, rather trying to evade 
the girl's question, "that I found the purtiest place 
to cleah f o' a cohn patch yo' evah seed ? Yes'm, I'se 
goin' to see what yo' daddy'll say when he comes 
back an' maybe we kin strike a trade. Do yo' see 
that light patch down yandah whah that ol' oak tree 
stan's? That's the place. Ought to raise twenty 
bushels to the acah on that groun' next yeah." 

Greeting him in a friendly way the next morn- 
ing, Lige Hinson was soon telling Darrell of his trip 
to the mill the day before. He bursted out in laugh- 
ter when he told about the twins that had just ar- 
rived at Hib Spencer's, over on the other side of 
Mount Lucky. 

"Only got fohteen chillun now, an' the Lawd 
only knows how that new rigiment'll git along," the 
old man drawled out, punctuating the end with a 
half laugh and yell. 

Darrell broached the clearing proposition to the 
old man. The young fellow had been born in a coun- 
try where they knew how to raise corn. He soon 
had Hinson interested. They walked down into the 
thicket where Steve had thought the best place to 
begin the clearing work. They talked it over and 
came to an agreement. Work on the clearing was 
to start that afternoon. 

Three months ago Steve Darrell had left Louis- 
ville with a mission to perform. Today found him 
with another object in view. His superiors had told 

81 



him what they would expect of him. To his certain 
knowledge, old Lige Hinson had not made a single 
drop of moonshine liquor since he had been a mem- 
ber of that household. In a way, he had accom- 
plished a great deal. There was but little money to 
be made in this illicit business. He had convinced 
the old man that there was money in farming and 
let him draw his own conclusions, and did it in a way 
to not allow a trace of suspicion arise that he knew 
what had been Hinson's calling before he came. This 
was not all that Steve Darrell had accomplished dur- 
ing his stay on Mount Lucky. He had won the love 
of the sweetest girl in the Pine Mountains. 

How was he to reveal his true self to the father 
and daughter who had so kindly taken him into their 
home, a total stranger? They had shared with him 
all they had. Could he now tell them who he was 
and why he had come to Mount Lucky ? These were 
serious thoughts for Steve Darrell. 

Steve worked steadily through the winter and by 
his untiring efforts had caused a decided change 
about the Hinson home. Old Lige worked with him 
and gave him every assistance and they became so 
well acquainted that they seemed to have known 
each other always. 

The trees, stumps and bushes had been raked 
and rolled together in great piles in the little clear- 
ing and would soon be ready to be fired. Steve es- 
timated that they had cleared about eight acres and 
he was working hard to put the place in shape so 
that their corn-planting might begin early. 

It was necessary, one day in early spring, for 
Darrell to make a trip to the cross-roads store and 

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post office, which was about nine miles from the 
Hinson home. He made an early start and reached 
the place about ten o'clock. Much to his surprise, 
he received a letter addressed to Marsh Rollins, the 
name that he had assumed and one that he had told 
the revenue authorities at Lousville he would use. 
It was addressed in a scrawly hand and bore the 
postmark of Shepherdsville, Kentucky, a small town 
about twenty-five miles from Louisville. Steve could 
guess its contents. It was from his superiors at 
Louisville, but had been mailed at Shepherdsville in 
order not to arouse the suspicion of the village post- 
master. After making needed purchases, he started 
back to the Hinson place. 

As soon as he had reached a point where he 
thought he would be secure from prying eyes, he 
pulled the letter from his pocket and proceeded to 
read it. It contained direct instructions to report at 
Louisville immediately and words were not minced 
in giving him the order. He had reached a point 
where he must reveal his identity to his friends. 
How must he do it, and what would be the result? 

These thoughts gave him great uneasiness, and 
when he reached home he was not only worn out 
from his eighteen-mile jaunt, but was just a trifle 
peevish. Mira noticed the tired look upon his face 
and thought she could detect something not just 
right, and, going over to where he was sitting at the 
table finishing his supper, she gently laid her arm 
about his shoulder in a loving way. 

"Honey, what's th' mattah?" she said. "Yo' 
doan seem jist right." 

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"Nothin', Mira, only I'se tired," he replied, push- 
ing back from the table. 

After Steve had retired he lay thinking of what 
was the best course to pursue. He knew that he 
must reply to the letter that he had just received, 
but what should its answer be ? It was late in the 
night before he closed his eyes, but he had resolved 
upon a plan of action, and the next morning was 
the time set when he was to disclose his identity to 
the Hinsons and tell them why he had come to 
Mount Lucky. 

It was an ideal spring morning. The sun rose 
bright and clear and the winter's chill had left the 
land. The trees were slowly taking on their mantle 
of green and the dogwood trees were blooming. The 
shrill scream of the jay bird could be heard as he 
flitted from tree to tree and a woodpecker hammered 
away on the dead limb of a nearby decaying tree. 

This was the picture that greeted Steve Darrell 
as he stepped out on the back gallery of the Hinson 
cabin the next morning. Picking up the water buck- 
et, he started for the spring to fill it. He was still as 
firm in his resolve as when he had made it the night 
before, and he only bided the time when he could 
make his secret known. 

Mira had prepared an excellent breakfast that 
morning, and it was heartily relished by the family. 
After the meal, Steve arose from his chair at the 
table and turned about, slowly sauntering over to- 
ward a chair where he had left his hat. He picked it 
up, tardily he twisted it around in his hands, then 
placing it on his head, he started for the door. He 
stopped. Should he make his confession now, or 

84 



wait until later? He paused for a moment and then 
decided that now was the only time. Turning, he 
faced his host and removed his hat. 

"Mistah Hinson, I'se got somethin' to say to 
yo'all this mornin', an' I doan know how you'se goin' 
to take it. Naw, I ain't goin' to leave yo\" 

Suddenly, he threw aside the dialect of the East- 
ern Tenneesean and appeared to the Hinson family 
as himself — Steve Darrell. 

"Mr. Hinson, I am sorry that I have to say this 
to you, sir, but I have a secret that I cannot keep 
longer. I am going to lay the matter in your hands 
and I will do so without asking favor, and if you 
think that I am a rascal, or whatever you wish to 
call me, you are at perfect liberty to act as you 
choose." 

"My name is not Marsh Rollins," he continued, 
"neither am I from Claiborn county, Tennessee, but 
my right name is Stephen Darrell and I am in the 
employ of the United States Government in the rev- 
enue department. I was sent here to find you and 
put your illicit still out of business. I found you 
and I also know where you still house is located. I 
have every evidence that you have worked at this 
nefarious business, but there is nothing you have 
done since I have been here, as one of your family, 
that would cause an indictment to be placed against 
you. Now, sir, what have you to say against me?" 

"Not a word, my boy, not a word. I know'd all 
'long that yo' wuz a revnoo," laughingly replied the 
old man. 

"You— what?" ejaculated Steve. "You—" 

"Yas," continued the old man, "I had my 'spicions 

85 



the night yo' kim heah, but I jist thought I'd wait 
an' see what yo'all done. Honest, Ma'sh — 'scuse me, 
— Mistah Darrell, I hadn't made any licker fo' nigh 
on three months befoh yo' come heah, an' honest, 
boy, Fse mighty glad that you com'd, fur I'se needin' 
someone lacs yo' to sorter wake things up 'roun' this 
or place, an' by gravy, you'se a dingah. But, say, 
Ma'sh — Mistah Darrell — what you'all goin' to do; 
ain't goin' back to Louievill', is yo'?" 

"I received a letter when I went to the post office 
yesterday," replied Steve, "and they asked me to 
report to headquarters at once. I'm not going to do 
it, but if you will get a sheet of paper I'll sit down 
and write my resignation and send that instead." 

The look on Mira's face was a puzzle. The ex- 
pression of her countenance followed Steve when he 
was telling her father about himself. In her mind 
she was wondering whether she was to lose him or 
not. Slowly moving over towards him, she hesitat- 
ingly reached out her hands. Steve turned and took 
them in his and gently pulled her to him. Leaning 
her head on his broad bosom, she turned her eyes 
upward. 

"Honey, does yo' loves me?" 

"I shoah does," he replied ; "I couldn't lives with- 
out yo'." 

Old Lige Hinson smiled. He walked over to 
where the happy young couple stood. Placing his 
arms about both of them, he earnestly remarked : 

"Say, Ma'sh, ef yo'all ain't too busy, let's go 
down an' smash up that danged old still." 



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